98-02-18, Michael Dossett (mpdossett at juno.com) forwards:

<< >An estimated 5000-10,000 birds, mostly Lapland Longspurs, were killed on
>the night of January 22nd, 1998 in the vicinity of a 420 foot tall guyed
>communications tower in western Kansas.... >>

Good Lord!! Thanks for passing this item along to 'Tweeters' even if no one
else found this as interesting as I did. I've never heard of such a mass
'tower kill' mortality in a single night! Disturbing to say the least!

The very first ornithological project which I ever undertook was a 'tower
kill' study at a similar tower in Maryville, Missouri (NWMSU) as a project for
my beginning Ornithology class. The results were very interesting but highest
single night kills were seldom more than 20 or so birds of various species and
usually way less than that and most often occurring on low overcast or foggy
spring nights with southerly winds. Another student who picked up where I
left off many years later recovered Missouri's first state record for ROCK
WREN(!) at that same site. I transferred to Cape Girardeau, Missouri (SEMSU)
my Junior year where I went to school with none other than Rush Limbaugh
(yikes! no connection), but aside from that built up and maintained the
school's vertebrate museum specimen collection (mostly small mammals, herps,
and salvaged birds) and also regularly checked out the local TV tower up in
the bluffs and woods above the Mississippi River where among the relative few
things I could even find amongst all the litter and surrounding brush was a
BLACK RAIL.

Along the West Coast, such events are relatively minor are they not? I would
think so since migrations of passerines and other small birds is less
concentrated on a specific corridor and more diffuse. Does anyone know much
about 'tower kill' mortalities in Western and Eastern Washington, or even
elsewhere? Do any or many birds crash into the tall buildings or the Space
Needle in Seattle? It seems I've seen or heard mention of such but the memory
is so vague and may not even be correct.

Richard Rowlett (Pagodroma at aol.com)
47.56N, 122.13W
(Seattle/Bellevue, WA USA)