The killer building at 311 S. Wacker. “Every day in September and October [1990] we found dead birds concentrated on the north side of the building”–the 65-story skyscraper topped by giant glowing cylinders across from the Sears Tower–“obviously southbound migrants that had struck the building at night,” writes Chicago Birder coeditor Allan Welby. “Hermit thrushes, Lincoln sparrows, ovenbirds, ruby-crowned kinglets, brown thrashers–a total of 19 species found dead on the sidewalks.” Janitors at 311 told him that “hundreds” more were killed at the top of the building: “Their first duty at sunrise was to clean up the dead birds.” But according to the property manager, turning off the dangerously attractive lighted cylinders during spring and fall migrations was “out of the question, since those lights are a signature element of the property.” Reflects Welby, “On November 1, a magnificent, finely colored woodcock was the last bird I found dead at the site during the 1990 fall migration. Such an odd place to find a woodcock, in the middle of downtown Chicago. Its presence is just an example of how each spring and fall, hundreds of species fly high over the city on their way to warmer climes for the winter, or to northern breeding grounds for the summer.” Good luck, fellas.
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death, where is thy sting? Most federal agencies do not use death data readily available from the Social Security Administration, reports the General Accounting Office in “Federal Benefit Payments,” a February 1991 report. “We demonstrated the value of obtaining and using SSA’s death information by matching it with DOD [Department of Defense], Labor, OPM [Office of Personnel Management], and RRB [Railroad Retirement Board] payment files. The match showed that for September 1989, these agencies paid benefits to 5,935 beneficiaries who had been listed as deceased in SSA’s records at least 3 months earlier (June 1989). We estimated that these beneficiaries’ accounts received potentially erroneous payments of $4.3 million per month.”
