For the last six years, the BirdSafe program incubated by the St. Louis Audubon Society has documented a deadly toll in St. Louis: bird collisions. With the Mississippi River flyway bringing flocks of birds through St. Louis during seasonal migrations, the region’s central corridor witnesses hundreds of birds dying after striking windows each year. In 2025, BirdSafe documented a record number of 547 bird collisions across select sites in downtown St. Louis and Clayton, with the goal of using the tally to push stakeholders for solutions.
According to Matt Barton, an urban conservation specialist at the St. Louis Audubon Society, national conversations about bird collisions inspired the start of BirdSafe in 2020. The year prior, a report by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology listed St. Louis in the top 10 most dangerous cities for migrating birds.
“Vocal members of [the] St. Louis Audubon Society wanted to get together and try to see what’s actually happening out there in St. Louis,” says Barton…