A total of 10,836 birds are known to have died last year after crashing into the windows of Chicago-area buildings, and artist Holly Greenberg intends to display a life-sized replica of each and every one. Greenberg is launching the project this summer with free crafting workshops where anyone can make a bird using upcycled fabric and donated materials. She hopes the massive, crowdsourced project — culminating in a “red carpet” of handmade birds as long as a football field — will educate the public about at-home solutions and highlight the long battle for mandatory bird-safety measures at new Chicago high-rises.
“The more people that know about this, the more people can pressure Mayor (Brandon) Johnson to revisit that (issue),” Greenberg said. “More voices need to be added so there is real legislative change.” Johnson’s office did not respond to a request for comment.
comes less than a year after Chicago’s bird-fatality problem made national news. In October, died in a single day, after crashing into a single lakefront building. Chicago is one of the nation’s most dangerous cities for migrating birds, due to factors such as its size, proximity to Lake Michigan, many tall, glass buildings, and its location in a major migration route, the Mississippi Flyway.
But while some cities — including Evanston and New York — have enacted mandatory bird-safe building standards, Chicago has not. Annette Prince, left, director of the Chicago Bird Collision Monitors.