The Dead Bird Rabbit Hole

Outside/In

NHPR

Society & Culture, Documentary, Natural Sciences, Nature, Science

4.7 • 1.5K Ratings

🗓️ 15 April 2026

⏱️ 35 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Every December, tens of thousands of volunteers look to the skies for an international census of wild birds. But during migration season, a much smaller squad of New York City volunteers take on a more sobering experience: counting dead birds that have collided with glass buildings and fallen back to Earth. In this episode, we find out what kind of people volunteer for this grisly job, visit the New York City rehab center that takes in injured pigeons, and find out how to stop glass from killing an estimated one billion birds nationwide every year. This episode was first produced and published in the spring of 2024. Featuring Melissa Breyer, Linda LaBella, Gitanjali Bhattacharjee, Katherine Chen, and Tristan Higginbotham. Produced by Taylor Quimby. For a transcript and full list of credits, go to outsideinradio.org. SUPPORT Outside/In is made possible with listener support. Click here to become a sustaining member of Outside/In. Subscribe to our newsletter (it’s free!). Follow Outside/In on Instagram or join our private discussion group on Facebook. LINKS Want to see the migration forecast? Check out Birdcast. Want to be a citizen scientist and report dead birds? Check out dBird. Want to see volunteer Melissa Breyer’s photos of dead birds? Check out Sad Birding.More about Project Safe Flight. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is Outside In, a show where curiosity and the natural world collide. I'm Nate Hedgy.
0:05.8	Well, good morning. In the spring of 2024, right around dawn, producer Taylor Quimby
0:14.4	visited the World Trade Center complex in Manhattan. He was there to meet a volunteer.
0:19.4	How's it going? Good. How are you doing? Thanks so much for
0:21.8	letting me tag along. Of course. I already did a quick circuit just to make sure there were nocturnal
0:27.1	collisions before they got swept up. This is Melissa Breyer. She works in this neighborhood. But this
0:33.3	morning, she walked right past her office building, her eyes trained on the ground.
0:38.6	How did you discover the program?
0:41.0	Well, it was during the pandemic lockdown and everything was so, we're going to go this way,
0:46.7	was so tense and hard in New York City. I was getting a lot of emotional relief from looking at birds in Central Park
0:56.6	on Twitter during spring migration of 2020 because that was weird in peak lockdown.
1:01.5	And then a photo crossed my Twitter feed of a bunch of dead birds all on a sidewalk that were
1:08.7	all found one morning. And I was like, whoa.
1:12.1	So then I just went down the dead bird rabbit hole. My whole Twitter just became dead birds.
1:32.1	Melissa Breyer is what you might call a dead birder.
1:36.2	She's one of a number of volunteers who look for migrating songbirds that have crashed into glass windows and then plummeted to the pavement.
1:40.7	She even documents her findings on an Instagram account called Sad Birding.
1:45.0	And look at how beautiful they are. They're so unusual looking.
1:50.0	Look at a little hummingbird.
1:53.0	Wow. Look at that. That was one morning.
1:56.0	You're holding one, two, three, four, five birds in each hand, and there's another ten or so on the ground.
2:03.6	I found 41 birds that day according to my notes here.
	...

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