Migratory birds are flying thousands of miles to the Big Apple — only to smack into a glassy Upper West Side condo and fall dead, according to avian advocates who tallied 28 fatalities in a single day thanks to the Central Park-adjacent building.
Upper West Side luxury condo Circa Central Park and its see-through facade is “one of the worst offenders” in the city when it comes to yearly migratory bird deaths, Rita McMahon, the director of the Wild Bird Fund nonprofit, told The Post Sunday.
Overnight on Friday into Saturday, 28 birds, most of which have flown thousands of miles to get to the Big Apple, crashed straight into the 11-story W. 110th Street condo’s windows, according to McMahon.
Twenty-six were found dead outright and two were discovered alive but later succumbed to their wounds, she said.
“They smash there, hit the glass, and fall anywhere from 10 to 40 feet down to the ground and suffer a double concussion,” McMahon said, adding the dead animals were found “at the base of the building, so there’s no question what happened.”
McMahon, who called the birds “gorgeous” and “fabulous,” said the deadly situation happens daily every spring and fall at the building — where, according to StreetEasy, a one-bedroom is on the market for $1.1 million, while a four-bedroom apartment is going for nearly $6 million.
“It keeps on happening,” she said. “There are dead birds in front of Circa every day.”
“It’s a tall glass structure that reflects the northern corner of Central Park. The birds flying think they’re flying into Central Park,” McMahon explained. “For one single building, it’s really bad, primarily because of its placement. This is a condo, a high-rent building.”
Building can rectify the problem by adding ultraviolet film over the windows or a dot pattern on the surface of the building so that “birds can see that and realize it’s solid,” said McMahon, who posted about the situation on Facebook and called for folks to voice their concerns to owners.
Terence Zahner, a local resident and bird watcher, said he started noticing the dead bird problem at the building in the fall of 2017 — the same year Circa Central Park was built.
“After the building opened in 2017 I started noticing a couple of dead birds on the sidewalk,” Zahner told The Post. “I wanted to figure out how bad the problem was and in the morning, I started to find more and more dead birds.”
Zahner noted that one day last year he found 20 dead birds outside the condo, and estimated that more than 200 birds have died as a result of crashing there.
“There is no question that this is a problem now,” Zahner said. “I think that at this point there needs to be a solution to the problem. The building needs to do something about this.”
Circa Central Park and its developer Artimus Construction did not immediately respond to requests for comment by The Post Monday.
Other city buildings like Brookfield Place, a shopping center and office complex in lower Manhattan, One World Trade Center and the Metropolitan Museum of Art are responsible for a significant number of bird deaths as well, McMahon said.
The migration period from South America and Central America happens over the course of five weeks beginning around May 4, and during that time “we have tremendous losses,” said McMahon, who estimated that New York City alone accounts for between 90,000 and 230,000 bird vs. building collisions a year.
“New York is smack dab in the middle of the Atlantic flyway,” said McMahon. “We are an oasis on the East Coast sprawl with enough wildlife that birds can come rest and continue their journey north.”
Last December, the City Council passed legislation requiring “bird-friendly” glass to be included on all new Big Apple construction, but McMahon noted that the requirement does not apply to buildings already built.
“I hope the City Council will say major offenders will have to change their ways, but it would be better if buildings had the ethics, the morality to become more sustainable,” McMahon said.