Weather & Science
Nearly 1,000 Birds Die After Crashing Into Chicago Exhibition Hall
The bodies of migrating birds killed when they flew into the windows of a Chicago exhibition hall, the night of Oct. 4-5. Photo Credit: (Daryl Coldren/Chicago Field Museum)
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David Willard has been checking the grounds of Chicago's lakefront exhibition center for dead birds for 40 years. On Thursday morning he found something horrible: Hundreds of dead songbirds, so thick they looked like a carpet.
Nearly 1,000 songbirds perished during the night after crashing into the McCormick Place Lakeside Center 's windows, the result, according to avian experts, of a deadly confluence of prime migration conditions, rain and the low-slung exhibition hall's lights and window-lined walls.