Cell phones kill birds?

roid · Post by **roid** » Fri Jun 03, 2005 11:56 pm

http://www.cheston.com/birdbig.html

i hadn't heard this before. that's a lot of dead birds every year.

Robo · Post by **Robo** » Sat Jun 04, 2005 3:08 am

Ugh. I read that before breakfast.

Floyd · Post by **Floyd** » Sat Jun 04, 2005 4:04 am

http://www.sibleyguides.com/mortality.htm

roid · Post by **roid** » Sat Jun 04, 2005 5:20 am

i just realised, the mobile phone towers in that artwork are a lot different to the mobile phone towers around here - which are just single poles with a kindof "fruit" arrangement on the top.

i've even seen some disguised as palmtrees, because of the design it's easy to do with some fake plastic leafing.

also. from floyd's link i see that birds are pretty stupid. i was under the impression that they were being killed/disoriented by the radiation from the mobile phone towers, but it's from simply RUNNING INTO THEM because they are TALL STRUCTURES.

makes me wonder how these birds handled TREES before.

Floyd · Post by **Floyd** » Sat Jun 04, 2005 6:01 am

branches are a lot easier to spot than strings of metal, especially with leaves and trees attached. plus, branches are elastic, other than strained metal strings.
though i was thinking disorientation first, too. on the other hand, however, i wonder how they manage to sit in groups on power lines if they can't see them, as stated.

anyway, our comm towers look like the way you described as well (germany).
furthermore, in comparison to windows, towerkill, as they call it, is rather low.

the artwork itself seems to try to bias the situation, as it's not just cell phone towers, rather than (comm-) towers and power poles as well.

woodchip · Post by **woodchip** » Sat Jun 04, 2005 3:49 pm

I think you should look up how many birds die by flying into tall building before your concern yourselfs with just cell phone towers.

1ACE1 · Post by **1ACE1** » Sat Jun 04, 2005 4:35 pm

I've had them run into the windows of houses I have lived in. Windows, as was stated by the above link statistic, are a huge thinkg for birds. Its not like there aren't many around anyway. Think of how many would be around if nothing ever killed them. We inhibit predators, and kill them ourselves. In the end everything works out well.

Tyranny · Post by **Tyranny** » Sun Jun 05, 2005 10:00 pm

We had a pigeon fly into the sliding glass door outback of our house just last week

DCrazy · Post by **DCrazy** » Sun Jun 05, 2005 10:15 pm

Around here they've started disguising cell towers as evergreens. We don't exactly have palm trees in New York.

To be quite honest, they don't look half bad.

Mobius · Post by **Mobius** » Tue Jun 07, 2005 5:10 pm

I distrust those bird fatality numbers. No sources quoted. No supporting documentation. too much guesswork.

Vertigo 99 · Post by **Vertigo 99** » Tue Jun 07, 2005 10:50 pm

DCrazy wrote:Around here they've started disguising cell towers as evergreens. We don't exactly have palm trees in New York.

To be quite honest, they don't look half bad.

I've seen those, except the ones I've seen were a lot bigger than normal trees, so they looked kinda funny.

Sirius · Post by **Sirius** » Tue Jun 07, 2005 11:05 pm

Floyd - probably to do with speed. Close up, powerlines are fairly easy to spot; travelling 150 mph they might not be.

...

...well, from what I see that doesn't happen very often, actually. Birds usually have ridiculously fast reflexes, and most of them can't fly at anything close to that speed anyway. So I dunno. The main thing I recall is just windows... although the smaller ones are quite resistant to that as well it seems. I remember a sparrow-sized bird flying right into a second-story window of this house, and falling all the way to the ground ... with seemingly no ill effects apart from being stunned for about two minutes.

Floyd · Post by **Floyd** » Wed Jun 08, 2005 7:38 am

150 mph? uhh, thats a really fast bird dude.

what i meant was that with elastic branches, the deformation energy necessary to slow down the bird after collision doesn't go exclusively to the bird, as well as the branch, whereas the string reacts much stronger.

either way, it's about speed like you indicated.

mobi: i googled that link and was to lazy at verifying everything, since that won't affect the current status of birds dieing anyway ...
don't feel deterred to check for yourself

Mobius · Post by **Mobius** » Sun Jun 12, 2005 6:59 pm

Floyd wrote:mobi: i googled that link and was to lazy at verifying everything, since that won't affect the current status of birds dieing anyway ...
don't feel deterred to check for yourself

Heh. BBC News has a big article up about how the danger to birds caused by Wind-Power Farms has been grossly and excessively exaggerated.

Birds have been around for at least 65 million years, and they will probably survive well beyond the lifespan of the human race, despite our attenpts to suck them into jet engines.