By Susan Milius
Ornithologist Christine Sheppard, frowning as if she’s lost something, squints into the darkness of a 30-foot-long contraption. It looks like a stretch-limo version of a garden shed, but one end sports high-tech glass available only from an industrial R&D lab. From a hole at the other end dangles a child’s pajama leg.
What Sheppard has lost is a song sparrow. She is using the tunnel contraption to test whether birds will fly into the piece of glass at the end. Since birds often don’t see glass and fly right into it, Sheppard hopes to test whether stripes or other markings on the glass can warn birds away from a fatal impact. The pajama leg provides a soft chute to slip a sparrow or other bird into at the dark end of the tunnel. The bird flies toward the light-filled windows at the other end, and at the last instant a hair-fine net in front of the glass prevents a collision.