COLEHARBOR - Two outdoorsy college kids walk the dead bird beat.

They hike the Highway 83 causeway between Lake Sakakawea and Lake Audubon hoping to find dead song birds, dead shore birds and dead water birds and hoping not to.

Most days, they do.

Between 400 and 500 birds die on that causeway every season.

It is not exactly carnage out there where the blue water ripples enticingly on both sides of a four-lane highway. The deaths are a small percentage of the thousands, likely hundreds of thousands, of birds that migrate through.

But nor is it safe refuge, even though the Audubon National Wildlife Refuge is right there on the east side.

The highway is a bird killer, for sure.

But as much and maybe more so are the power lines that are owned by the Western Area Power Administration. Twelve metal towers march across the causeway, gripping 10 power lines as they go.

Birds in full flight can't see the lines, or can't duck in time.

They break their necks, or are stunned, and injured and die on impact when they hit the rocks and pavement below.

WAPA doesn't like what's happening, and, in financial and grant partnership with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Avian Power Line Interaction Committee, is investing $500,000 to hopefully prevent up to 80 percent of bird wire strike deaths on the causeway.

This is the second year of a three-year project that will be the most scientifically rigorous study ever conducted on preventing bird strike fatalities.

Three types of scare devices were installed on the wires this spring. One is an orange spinner, another is a yellow flapping reflector and the third is spiral piece that makes the wire appear thicker.

The idea is that the devices will warn or deflect birds away from the wires.

The study will determine whether the devices do what they're supposed to do, which does it best and how well they hold up to wind and weather.

Craig Hultberg, refuge biologist, said the study is set apart from others because besides collecting dead birds, it includes a science-based look at a bird strike solution.

Hultberg said the work will have national and international implications with a growing demand for energy worldwide.

"We've already had calls from all over the country on this," Hultberg said.

Dan Barth, a University of North Dakota wildlife student and Renee Peter, a University of Idaho conservation biology student, are the legs and eyes of the study.

Three out of four days, April through October, months that mark the spring and fall migration of birds, they walk the causeway. Each of those days, they also walk a portion of the granite rock rip rapping on the Audubon side of the causeway.

They mark the location of dead birds on a global positioning system. Unless they've been utterly flattened by a road tire, the birds are taken to the refuge headquarters where necropsies determine how they were killed.

The protocol Barth and Peter follow is precise. It includes dawn and dusk observations to record general bird movement. It also includes periodic "hidings" of marked dead birds by others to extrapolate how many the two might miss counting, especially down in the nooks and crannies of the rock rip rapping.

Generally, about one-third of birds are killed by vehicles, one-third by wire strikes and the final third falls into the ""unknown category." It's not possible to guess how many birds strike the wires, fall into the water and can't be counted or get carried off by predators before they're found, Barth and Peter said.

A separate, private group is using one wire span to see how well its computer-linked transmitters detect when the wires are struck by birds.

Misti Schriner, a WAPA biologist at Denver, said the power agency picked the Highway 83 location because it's an especially deadly location.

The causeway is a flyover area for birds that nest and breed on one side and forage on the other.

The dead bird count so far has found 67 different species, from showy white pelicans to endangered piping plovers and everything from coots, grebes and gulls in between.

It isn't exactly uplifting to find dead birds, but Peter said being outdoors and learning so much about so many bird species are the upsides.

While this year's numbers aren't completely in yet, Schriner said it looks like the scare devices may be reducing the bird strike fatalities, perhaps as much as 10 percent to 30 percent.

The study will continue next year - if it isn't interrupted by road construction - so two years of data can be compared. Ultimately, the best device will be installed across the entire line spread.

Schriner said if the world were ideal, no bird would die from flying into a power line it can't see or avoid.

But it isn't and there is much peril for the winged creatures whose flight and fancy feathers add such charm to the world.

Still, at Audubon and in more places to come, people are working diligently to give birds a chance.

(Reach reporter Lauren Donovan at 888-303-5511 or lauren@;westriv.com.)