![]() Bank Stadium, the $1.1 billion home of the Minnesota Vikings NFL team, was in its design stages, bird experts predicted that the structure would be an avian abattoir its massive glass facades, they warned, would be indistinguishable to birds’ eyes from the surrounding sky. McGuire’s mission to build a bird-safe stadium stands in stark contrast with the owners of another new professional sports stadium in town. “They recognize the importance of Minneapolis along the flyway, and they did it on their own.” “They didn’t need an organization or regulations telling them to make a bird-friendly stadium,” Rebeccah Sanders, vice president of the Great Lakes and Upper Mississippi Flyway for Audubon. But it’s going above and beyond the rules anyway. ![]() Increasingly, architects are incorporating bird-friendly elements into their designs, homeowners are marking their windows and sliding-glass doors to make them less deadly, and cities and states-including Minnesota-are instituting bird-friendly building codes.Īllianz Field isn’t receiving any public funding and thus isn’t subject to Minnesota’s code, which went into effect in 2012. Paul and Minneapolis. It makes for a perfect storm, says Christine Sheppard, director of the American Bird Conservancy’s Bird Collisions Program: “Birds and water and migration and buildings is always a dangerous combination.”īird strikes are a serious problem, but not an intractable one: Over the past quarter century, as awareness of the threat posed by buildings has grown, multiple collision-prevention products have hit the market, most of which are designed to make glass apparent to birds. In autumn huge concentrations barrel straight down from the boreal forest, pausing to rest and refuel along the Mississippi River, which cuts through St. Here in the Twin Cities, hundreds of thousands of migratory birds representing more than 300 species pass through during the spring and fall. Most of the animals that fly full-speed into windows are passerines-perching birds such as orioles and warblers-and most strikes occur during migration. Reflections in glass windows create the deadly illusion of sky or vegetation, and birds simply don’t see transparent barriers such as the walls of atria and walkways. So perhaps it isn’t surprising that since McGuire first began planning the Loons’ new stadium in late 2015, he’s taken birds into consideration, striving to build a structure that pleases the fan base while preventing species like those orioles from crashing into it.Īs many as a billion birds die every year in North America from colliding with buildings. “Once you start looking at birds and butterflies, you see the world differently,” he says. “Monarchs are back-they’re having a good year,” he says, pointing to a flitting burst of orange at my feet that I awkwardly sidestep. McGuire, a trained medical doctor and former CEO of UnitedHealth Group, has long been captivated by winged creatures. “I spent the morning getting the mealworms ready, just in case some are still moving through,” he says. Not the Loons, as fans might expect-after all, that’s the nickname of Minnesota United FC-but rather orioles: The birds are passing through on their annual long-haul journeys south, and McGuire likes to put out protein-packed morsels to help fuel the neotropical migrants’ treks. Amid the clanking, beeping, and general hullabaloo, managing partner Bill McGuire is talking about birds. Paul, the soon-to-be new home of Minnesota’s professional soccer team. On a postcard-perfect morning in September, construction is underway at Allianz Field in St.
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