Migratory birds face extraordinary welfare challenges during their journeys — exhaustion, starvation, collision, hunting, and habitat loss threaten billions of individuals annually.
The welfare of migratory birds is largely invisible — individual birds die in their billions from preventable causes, but each death occurs in a brief moment of exhaustion, collision, or hunting that leaves no trace. Window strikes kill birds instantly or cause injuries that result in prolonged suffering before death. Exhausted migrants that run out of fuel during storms or on unsuitable stop-over sites face a deteriorating internal state — hypoglycaemia, muscle catabolism, and disorientation — before death or recovery. These are not abstract statistics but welfare events experienced by individual sentient animals. Simple measures — lights-out programmes during migration, bird-safe glass, and stop-over habitat protection — prevent suffering at massive scale.