A dead black-throated blue warbler rests upon the freezer that is to become its temporary resting place inside the Fatal Light Awareness Program (FLAP) Canada office in Toronto on September 24, 2020. Even though most of the birds that make it to the office are lifeless, FLAP's co-founder Paloma Plant's compassion for these animals continues into their deaths.
In a church basement in downtown Toronto, Paloma Plant, next to a freezer full of dead birds, starts work early as a co-founder of the Fatal Light Awareness Program (FLAP) Canada. The registered charity raises awareness of the fatal dangers that buildings pose to birds. Before the city wakes, Plant begins her search for both injured and dead birds in the downtown area. Injured birds get immediate care and transport to the Toronto Wildlife Centre if ultimately needed. Dead birds get cataloged and stored in a freezer where they may eventually end up in the ornithology department at the Royal Ontario Museum. While seeing multiple species of birds taken out by largely preventable building collisions within a short time frame may make Plant angry, seeing buildings make effective changes, and the sharp decrease in bird strikes as a result, are what keep her going.
These patrols cover the Greater Toronto Area through the help of a vast network of dedicated volunteers who find the dead or injured birds that have collided with glass. Strikes are documented and entered into the mapper - a global tracker showing bird/building collisions around the world - with dead birds being collected in a small bag. If the birds are still living, Plant quickly attends to their injury with a dose of the plant-based remedy arnica in order to help facilitate their safe return to the FLAP office where she can assess and assist them further.
Despite the effort that Plant and a team of over 120 volunteers put into making these glass landscapes less deadly, they estimate that there are about one billion bird strikes in North America per year. Plant believes that to be a conservative figure.