Dead bird on pavement. Photo by Adam Bailey / CC BY-ND 2.0 Last week, a justice of the peace in Toronto ruled that a local building owner would’t be penalized for the deaths of 900 birds that had crashed into its gleaming towers over the course of two years. The suit, brought by the environmental groups Ecojustice, had sought to hold the former owners of the Consilium Place high-rise towers responsible for causing bird deaths in a city that appears to be particularly lethal for winged migrants. Building windows reflect surrounding nature and objects, disorienting birds. They crash into the buildings’ sides, raining down onto the streets, where citizen volunteers collect their crushed bodies. The justice of the peace, William G. Turtle, ruled that the towers had indeed caused the deaths, but that the owner was not at fault. He argued that in order to be considered “cruelty to animals,” the harm would have to be deliberate. He also argued that the light drawing the birds to...