A new “Lights Out, San Diego” campaign by the San Diego Audubon Society is calling on county residents to switch off non-essential lighting at night to help migratory bird species who are threatened by it.

Turns out San Diego County actually has more bird species than anywhere else in the entire United States and is also on the “Pacific Flyway,” a path millions of migratory birds use to fly south in the winter and north in the spring.

“We’re trying to build coalitions and find out what the best option is (to create darker skies) for a variety of reasons, including that, in San Diego, we are on a critical spot on the migratory bird path,” said Andrew Meyer, director of conservation for San Diego Audubon Society. “So many birds are coming up from the tropics and Mexico using our mountains and coastline to navigate with on the way. And during the migrating season, 125,000 birds fly through San Diego County each night. Our county is rich with migrating birds and they can become confused and disoriented with (too many) lights. So we need to not have lights on that we don’t need.”

Last spring, more than 67 million birds were estimated to have flown across San Diego’s skies. The goal of the Lights Out, San Diego campaign is to ensure that these birds can get to their destinations safely.

The Lights Out, San Diego campaign is encouraging everyone to turn off non-essential lighting from 11 p.m. to 6 a.m. during the migration season to provide darker skies for nocturnal aviary migrants.

Basically, light pollution in dense urban areas like Pacific Beach or the Gaslamp Quarter can disrupt migratory bird navigation. This is especially true since more than 80% of birds migrate at night between 11 p.m. and 6 a.m.

If there are too many lights on, birds can become confused and not know where their critical stops are on their migration. This confusion can also cause a bird to arrive at their destination late, putting them at a disadvantage when it comes to food or mates.

There’s a lot at stake, too. In 2022, nearly one in four breeding birds have been lost in the U.S. and Canada, equaling about 3 billion total birds.

Meyer noted bright lights can inhibit birds’ migratory patterns causing them to “slow down, fly around too long and get exhausted or, most egregiously, crash into buildings that have lights on. So there is a whole suite of lights in our communities that need to be turned off at night, our front porch lights and landscaping lights pointing upwards on buildings that have a detrimental impact on birds during migrating season. So, if you don’t need a light on for security purposes, turn it off at 11 p.m. during migrating season, and we’ll have much darker skies.”

For more information on how important San Diego County is to migrating birds, visit dashboard.birdcast.info/region/US-CA-073\.

Snow geese. PHOTO BY PETER THOMAS ANDREW