For more than 40 years, migrating birds have been crashing into McCormick Place Lakeside Center. The glassy, low-lying convention building on the shores of Lake Michigan has been the scene of about 1,000 deadly collisions per year, according to Dave Willard, retired Field Museum bird division collections manager. In 2023, the death toll for a single day was so high — at least 960 birds — that the carnage became national news. But this fall, when bird collision monitors performed their usual daily searches of the building’s grounds, they found something remarkable: just 18 dead birds. “To me, it was almost miraculous,” said Willard. The initial results are in at Lakeside Center, following the application of bird-safe film to the building’s windows: Crash fatalities were down more than 90% this fall, according to Willard, who has been monitoring the site regularly since 1982. “This is monumental,” said U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Director Martha Williams, who toured the project Wednesday. “I wanted to celebrate your leadership,” Williams told Larita Clark, CEO of the Metropolitan Pier and Exposition Authority, which owns and operates Lakeside Center. “And (I wanted to) empower and encourage partnerships. This was a big step for the Fish and Wildlife Service and our staff.” The bird-safe film, applied at a cost of $1.2 million this summer, marks Lakeside Center’s windows with tiny dots that help birds detect the glass and avoid it. The film was installed after discussions with the Fish and Wildlife Service, the Field Museum and Chicago Bird Collision Monitors. U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Director Martha Williams touches the Feather Friendly glass treatment on the windows of McCormick Place Lakeside on Jan. 8, 2025. (Eileen T. Meslar/Chicago Tribune) For Lakeside Center’s owner and operator, the project — completed less than a year after the day when almost 1,000 birds died —  was basically uncharted territory, Clark said. “We didn’t know what we were going to do, we just knew we needed to do something, so we’re ecstatic that it’s been such an amazing outcome,” she said. Lakeside Center — previously the Chicago building with the most documented bird-crash fatalities per year — had a fall casualty count in line with that of many other Chicago buildings, Willard said. “I don’t know if after this coming spring there will be any point in continued monitoring (at Lakeside Center), but we’ll see,” he said. The 18 deaths at Lakeside Center this fall compare with 1,280 deaths in fall 2023 and 771 in fall 2022, Willard said. In other recent years, the fall death count at the building has ranged from about 350 to 600. Initially, Willard thought one possible explanation for the low number of deaths this fall was that birds simply weren’t migrating through the region at their usual rate. But as the season went on, bird collision monitors in the downtown areas reported finding as many as 100 or 150 crash victims in a single day, while the good news at Lakeside Center just kept coming. “I turned into a believer” in bird-safe film, Willard said. “And (I) started thinking about how maybe it can be pushed to some of the other buildings around town as well.” Willard did add a caveat: He’d still like to see how the bird-safe film performs in the spring. “I have no reason to think that it won’t be as effective for spring migration, but birds are coming (from) a different direction, so we want to document whether it is or isn’t working,” he said. Chicago sits in a major bird migration path, and transparent and reflective surfaces are hazardous for birds. Lakeside Center, which was built in the 1970s, has been a particular challenge due to its vast windows and its location right next to the lake. Birds migrate along the shoreline at night, and in the morning they look for land, said Brian W. Smith, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service assistant regional director for migratory birds, Midwest region. Lakeside Center is one of the first places that attracts the migrating birds in the morning, Smith said, and when they get closer they see what looks like good habitat — trees, water and sky — reflected in the building’s windows. A bird flies past panels on the windows of the McCormick Place on July 9, 2024. (Antonio Perez/Chicago Tribune) On the October day in 2023 when almost 1,000 birds died at McCormick Place, Willard told the Tribune that birds were crashing into windows even as monitors collected the casualties. “It was just discouraging as can be,” he said at the time. “You’re looking at a rose-breasted grosbeak that, if it hadn’t hit a Chicago window, would have made it to the Andes of Peru.” Willard blamed the worst day in more than 40 years of monitoring on an array of factors, including weather patterns, badly timed rain and lit windows at the building. A year later, the mood at Lakeside Center was very different. Paul Groleau, vice president of Feather Friendly, the company that makes the bird-safe film used at Lakeside Center, said that when word got out about the project, his company landed about nine other projects in Chicago. In two of those cases, would-be clients asked for “the same product that you put on McCormick Place.” In a phone interview, Willard called the recent decline in fall casualties  “remarkable.” “I just really hope that not only does it hold true into the future, but also it’s a stimulus to other buildings to address their own (bird collision) problems,” he said. [email protected]