It’s Clear—Glass Kills. How to Prevent Bird Collisions at Your Home

Okay. Here we are. So, Tina, again, thank you so much, for inviting me to this.

It’s a pleasure to be here. And thank you all who are out there in the audience. So, we’re going to be talking about how to prevent bird collisions tonight

at your home. And what I’m going to be doing tonight is running through

a little bit of background and, and then, go through some more specifics about why this happens and why birds collide

and then talk some about, some of the bigger patterns, that are associated with this and then sort of come around to some solutions at the end

and then give you some vistas of what it actually looks like to deploy some of these, bird saving measures.

So let’s get into it. I’d like to start, with, remembering.

Well, why are we doing this? And why are we interested in birds? Why do we love birds?

And there are plenty of reasons. This is just a few, thinking about the place

that birds occupy, in our collective ecosystems. And the planet where they provide services, they pollinate, they,

disperse fruits and seeds, they control pests. They also obviously have some cultural services from the human perspective

that include, just that we we love them. They sound wonderful. They look beautiful. They do really exciting things.

They’re great proxies for for conservation and for indicators of, the health of our environment.

And of course, in the US, maybe one out of every three adults spends time bird watching every year.

And those 100 or so million of us spend a lot of money over $100 billion.

So, there are lots of reasons that we’re interested in. We love birds and they have value.

I also want to highlight, not just the passion and the interest, but there’s also some alarm

and there’s some of the, the motivation for why we study birds is because we have seen some really

dramatic declines over the last 50 years. Some of you may have seen this image

before or this graphic, that highlights losing about 3 billion birds,

breeding birds from the US and Canada in the last 50 years. Enormous, dramatic declines heavily represented by migratory birds.

But these are massive changes not just to bird populations, but obviously to all of the ecosystems in which these birds participate.

And they participate on a global scale. So we have these two sort of broad reasons for for our interest.

And of course, understanding something about these declines is really critically important. And, and the leading causes of bird mortality that I was just referencing.

So we really have three that we can reference here. We think about habitat destruction loss and conversion and change

all those places around the planet where we’re we’re converting green spaces and wilderness, into built environment and or fragmenting it.

Serious issue. We know cats outdoors and feral cats also a very serious issue.

And then you’ll see, next in the line there, collisions, collisions with buildings in particular buildings

and structures with reflective and transparent glass. And that’s obviously what we’re here to talk about tonight,

in particular, those sorts of structures that are often homes and maybe what you can do to actually effect a change.

So let’s think about those collisions and the scale of these collisions. So in the US alone we’re talking about more than 30

birds a second are killed every year. That translates to over a billion. Some of the new estimates are even higher than that.

It’s a large number of birds that are killed every year. What causes these collisions?

We have a few different elements that we can think about as to why, and two of them relate to glass the transparency

and reflectivity of glass, where birds can’t see it is solid, or they see reflections of habitat and think that they’re flying into habitat.

Another component relates to light pollution. At night, light draws birds toward this kind of infrastructure

that has the transparent and reflective glass. Most bird migration happens at night, and we can go further into thinking about,

well, what does this mean and why are the collisions happening? So when it comes to the transparent glass, it’s invisible, obviously.

When it comes to the reflective glass, there’s confusion. And when it comes to the light pollution that relates to disorientation

and attraction combined in birds that are migrating at night. We may not know this, but, when birds are flying

and in particular flying towards some open space, they may not always be looking forward and perceiving exactly what’s ahead of them.

Bird’s vision is quite interesting and different from humans in that in that the focus of the eyes is actually in a more lateral direction.

So looking straight ahead is not the area of highest resolution. And so to, you know, these navigation senses

and orientation senses that birds have the ability to perceive the magnetic field at night or use celestial cues.

These are compromised by light pollution. So this is a twin problem that’s causing the collisions.

Now you may ask, okay, what kinds of birds are involved in these collisions? There are many, many species.

This group of ten that you see here, happen to be, if you will, overrepresented,

large numbers of these species occur in collisions. And, this comes from a paper that was published about four years ago.

Hopefully you may recognize some of these birds. I’ll start with number one. Just to go around black sort of blue warbler often bird is number two.

Ruby throated hummingbird, yellow bellied tops up card number four on the far right there.

Wood thrush. Gray catbird. Common yellow throated number seven. Brown thrasher at eight.

White breasted not hatch at nine and American goldfinch at ten. These are primarily songbirds of course, and many of these migrate at night.

Not all, but many migrate at night. So just to give you a flavor for for what species

are involved in these kinds of collisions that we’re talking about now, collisions happen every day of the year,

but they tend to happen quite a lot more frequently during migration. And just a little bit of a call out and highlight to that on this graphic,

you see the scale of what’s happening with bird migration at night. In the continental U.S., we’re talking about every spring,

where the green arrows are two and a half to 3.5 billion birds are migrating generally north to breed and reproduce.

And then in the fall, for those birds have done so, we’re talking about 4 to 5 billion birds migrating.

That’s billion with the capital B so large numbers of birds on the move. And further,

when we think about characterizing how these movements happening happen, sometimes they are intense.

For example, last night actually very early in the morning, eastern time

this morning, there were over 700 million birds aloft over the United States.

Most of those happened to be over the southern Great Plains and the lower Mississippi River Valley,

but really large numbers that are not necessarily all the time. There always are some birds migrating during periods of of migration,

but it’s on particular nights when these incredible pulses happen and are kind of indicative of these mass movements.

And also situations that can be extremely challenging for birds, obviously, when they face the twin problem of glass and light pollution.

this idea of, of massive migrations are happening and there are, some causes behind these collisions.

In particular, I was referencing light and glass, right? Light pollution and glass reflective and transparent surfaces.

So let’s think for a minute about the global human footprint where people are, where humans have spent time, where they’ve built infrastructure.

We know that that will include both of these features. It will include buildings, homes with, transparent and reflective surfaces.

It also will include areas where there is illumination at night. And so this is a global issue.

We’re going to narrow it down right now to talk a little bit about and think about the U.S. So let’s think about the building situation for a minute.

And you can think about where the human infrastructure is now. In the next 35 years, the amount of building area is going to double.

And think about what this means in particular in the U.S. So every month for the next 35 years, basically

another New York City worth of buildings is going to be erected. Most of that infrastructure doesn’t exist yet.

So an enormous number of places where these kinds of collisions can occur.

Additionally, in thinking a little bit further about light pollution and how it affects, birds migrating at night,

we know that where there are dark skies, this is very much the pattern that that birds and other nocturnal organisms,

have experienced for the millions of years. They use natural illumination from stars and planets and these celestial bodies,

however, artificial light, light pollution impacts that dramatically. And we can sort of see a scale here

of what that light distribution looks like on the far left. What a true dark sky situation looks like,

where obviously there is very, very little or no light pollution. But then as you go farther and farther to the right,

you see what happens as you get into more urbanized areas and suburban areas. And when you get to that inner city sky, it is very difficult often to see stars.

And from the human perspective, we’re very clear on what that means from the bird perspective.

For birds migrating at night, it poses a tremendous number of challenges. And just an example of sort of what this means.

Some of you may be familiar with the tribute in Light, the, memorial to the lives lost on September 11th.

That happens every year on September 11th in, New York City, on the right hand of this image, these powerful beams,

they’re incredibly attractive to birds that are migrating at night. And and those the sort of patterns that you see in the beams,

those are birds migrating. It’s one of the opportunities where we’ve learned quite a lot about exactly how quickly,

when you turn lights off, birds return to more normal migratory behaviors. It’s turning out, and we hope to publish this soon,

that it’s on the order of 30s 60s. It’s very quick. So, the idea that you can reduce light pollution

and that you might be able to alter the way glass and birds interact with that glass, these are incredibly important

for thinking about conservation and saving birds. So lights out.

Let’s continue with this. We have had a project for the last five years in Texas to engage,

cities in Texas, Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, Fort Worth and Austin and others to turn off lights

and more broadly, to spread this message around the United States. And this is part of the solution.

Yes, light attracts and disorients birds as they’re migrating at night. It brings them into or confuses them in areas

where there are hazards, in particular these hazards of glass. And so the primary solution, although yes, we want to eliminate light pollution,

a primary solution to deal with this reflective and transparent glass is to make it visible.

And we have some solutions for doing this that are actually quite straightforward. You’ll notice as you look at these, images of glass, you can of course see it

because there are decals on it, something to make that reflective and transparent

surface, surfaces more broken so that, it actually appears as a solid something, through

which a bird cannot fly and in which the reflection is disrupted.

Now, I want to take a little bit of a minute here to to have a quiz and think about we’ve

heard about how many buildings there are and what that trend is like. We’ve learned a little bit about, glass and light, obviously.

So I want to pose the question to all of you out there. What kind of buildings do

we think are most responsible for these kinds of collisions? And I know there are a lot of you out there.

So so I’ll give you a minute or two to answer the question again. What types of buildings do birds fly into?

Most often you can only make one choice.

Now, as you’re thinking about your choice, perhaps you’ve had some experiences where you’ve seen impacts,

where birds have collided, perhaps, at your home or, your place of work

or perhaps at some other, other, business you visited. Think about that as you’re answering this question.

Think about where you’ve experienced if you have, collisions, obviously, from the pole at the beginning, clearly, some of you have at your homes,

and places of business as well. All right.

So looks like about, pretty relatively even distribution there.

Looks like about a third of you suggested low rise or residential buildings. A little bit more. Actually.

The most suggested that it was high rise buildings. And then, the lowest number was mid-rise, in terms of the pole.

So drumroll please. This might be surprising to you,

but most of the collisions happen below 100ft above the ground.

So we’re talking about low rise and mid-rise buildings okay. High rise buildings. Yes.

Birds certainly collide with them, but the numbers are so much lower. Despite that, it may be a very high profile incidents when these occur.

It is these much, much, lower to the ground buildings where these kinds of collisions happen.

And in fact, the numbers are dramatically so in favor of those buildings

that are, lower than about 100ft above the ground. And you might realize, why that is, we think about where

vegetation is distributed and where birds are spending a lot of time. Yes. When they’re migrating at night,

they’re moving well above the surface of the ground often. But as they descend and as they stop over and as they feed,

they’re moving in much, much closer proximity to the ground. And where all of that vegetation is and where the vegetation and,

clear and transparent glass meet and where bird activity is occurring. Obviously, this is one of the places where the greatest hazards exist.

Now, just because that’s the case, it does not mean that, we are powerless to stop this.

There are solutions. We’re obviously going to be able to talk, quite a little bit more about this in the Q&A.

But we have a number of different kinds of products that are listed on the the right here that are possible too, from the glass perspective.

Again, make it so that that transparency becomes not transparent. And, birds can perceive these, surfaces as solid

and breaking up those reflections now important here. You’ll notice in particular in that sign in the right hand image of the DIY,

project, you’ll notice the spacing of those dots that two by two,

inch grid very important for making glass, these reflective areas and these transparent areas appear

solid to birds so that they don’t float trying to fly through them. And they don’t, breaks up the reflection.

So they’re not attempting to, see that vegetation or see what it is that they think they’re flying toward.

And, having that two by two pattern. We’ll break that up. Now, in addition to the actual solutions, of course,

these kinds of decals that you can apply to the windows, we have some other, engagement

and involvement opportunities here that I want to highlight. So, it is critically important. Yes.

Even though we know quite a lot about the way to solve by making glass safe, treating it so it can be apparent to birds,

and eliminating light pollution wherever we can. There’s still more we need to know. Collision monitoring

is critically important in terms of communities that are going out and, studying where birds are colliding, perhaps saving injured birds.

There are ways that we can engage on college campuses. There are certifications from municipalities

where where they’re engaging with the the community and where they’re enacting these kinds of bird friendly legislation, bird friendly proclamations

that deal with light and glass, really important. And then obviously, we can also engage in sort of these informative

talks like what we’re doing here today, enhancing what’s in curricula. And then, of course, advocating for these kinds of bird friendly,

design and plans, really critically important. Now, let me just highlight sort of what the arc of this might look like.

Some of you may be familiar and maybe, unfortunately, have seen some massive collision events with birds.

This one that is represented here, happened in Chicago in October of 2023, where almost 1000 birds

were killed on a single night at a single building. And this was a staggering, dramatic, awful situation.

The members of the Field Museum staff that took these photographs, the Chicago Bird Collision Monitoring Group and others, collected these birds.

They documented what was there, this building and other places in Chicago,

like in other cities, where glass hadn’t been treated and light pollution had not necessarily been mitigated or abated.

This looks all too familiar. However, there is a new really incredible story to this. So after this particular event,

and after quite a lot of that community involvement, I was just talking about, we had this incredible situation

where, the building deployed the bird friendly technologies, deployed those two by two inch grid, decals on to the building,

and also did shading of the light inside to protect that light from coming out.

And the results were dramatic instead of, on average, you know, over a thousand birds being being killed at this building every year

after the deployment of the bird friendly technologies of the, these decals, the two by two grid, the number dropped to 50.

It’s like the 90 to 95% decline. So, these are powerful solutions.

We can, sort of take these matters into our own hands. And I should mention also, let’s just take a look in these next few images.

A lot of you think, well, okay. I understand that birds can see these. Well, I’m a little concerned.

Perhaps if I put these sorts of, patterns in my house, am I going to see them, too? And I just want to take you to you to take a look

at what what these patterns look like from the inside and from the outside. Outside on the left, inside on the right.

McCormick place is the first example. Orange County Parks is the second.

Again, take a look. Left hand side is outside. What it looks like when you’re looking in right hand side is inside.

Looking out. The Teton Raptor Center in Wyoming.

Simon Fraser University. The Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources.

And again, these are these two by two inch grids here that we’re seeing. Right. And these these white dots that we see

looking from the outside and then from the inside. And then finally Oklahoma State University.

Now this should give you the sense of sort of the experience from our perspective,

that it becomes very, very easy to just see through these and sort of as a human, not perceive them.

For birds, these are critically important to apply to your windows, to the outside of the windows

where birds can see them breaks up the glass, the reflection. It also makes it so it doesn’t appear transparent.

And it is a workable solution that has dramatic positive impact.

And of course, part of the reason that we want to do this. Yes, we love birds and nobody wants to see more dead birds

beneath a kitchen window, beneath a skyscraper, or beneath any place of business with untreated, glass, or reflective surface.

Of course, we also do this because we want to reverse this curve. We want to stop these declines.

And collision mortality is a huge source. As I mentioned, over a billion birds every year in the U.S alone are killed in these collisions.

And this is something that we can control. And you can control it at the level of your home.

With that, I want to say thank you again for the opportunity to speak. I want to make sure you get this message.

Treat your glass, turn off your lights and please tell your friends to follow your lead in doing that.

And with that, I think we have plenty of time for question and answer and, to discuss this in some more detail.

Thank you again. Thank you Andrew, so much.

Incredible information there. I just want to say,

that if you had problems viewing the, the webinar, it could have been a zoom update was required.

We are recording everyone who attends. And even if you weren’t able to attend but you registered will get a link to this

recording that you can watch over and certainly share with others. So, another, interesting piece of information.

We asked folks their questions. When they registered, we had over 600 questions from the registration page.

We’re obviously not going to get through all those, but there’s a lot of common themes that came up in the, real time Q&A as well as this question set.

So we’re going to go ahead and, try to get through as many of these as possible, starting with the questions that we heard most often.

And I’m going to turn over to the panel to start answering some of these. The first question is for Christine.

So if someone lives in a high storey apartment building, like the the ones that Andrew showed and can’t access

the outside of the windows, what can they do to prevent collisions? Christine. That’s a tough one.

As Andrew said, you need to put your markers on the outside of the glass.

Window washers are starting to take this on, as a sort of another thing that they do.

They can install a copy in Bird Savers. They can install feather friendly on the outside of windows.

So your building may have, window washers that come twice a year, or you might have to seek out window washers.

They’re willing to do this, but it is definitely becoming something that is much more common than it was ten years ago.

Okay. Thank you. Christine. Next question I think is going to go to Brendan. If you’ve never seen or heard a bird window strike

or seen a dead bird outside a window, does that mean that your windows don’t pose much of a threat for bird strikes?

Yeah. Great question. I wouldn’t bank on it. I think there’s, reasonable chance

that collisions are occurring that you just don’t notice. If you think about the question you asked earlier,

how many people have experienced a collision? A lot of people have, but the window in your memory is still there.

There isn’t usually somebody on the inside of that window waiting to count how many birds are hitting. But that doesn’t mean birds aren’t hitting the glass.

We did a study, where I live, a few years ago, where we set up video cameras in a backyard, and we recorded near bird feeders over two years.

What was happening? We found that there were 29 collisions that occurred. Of those collisions, 23 of them resulted in the bird

flying away immediately without leaving a trace. And the homeowners who were inside for most of the study, only documented

or noticed a couple of the collisions, which explains that this is a vastly under observed and under documented phenomenon.

All windows can pose some amount of risk for birds. It does vary from window to window, but it does need to be taken seriously for

every structure. And I would just add to that, Brendan, that there’s a follow up study to that

that showed a lot of those birds that fly off or are stunned and end up in a wildlife rehab center.

About 60% of those actually end up dying from their injuries. So just to put a emphasis on

the numbers are actually quite underreported, right. So, thank you for that. Okay.

Another one for Christine. Which windows pose the greatest threat for bird strikes in terms of direction

exposure screens, size, that sort of thing? Windows near bird feeders are by far the most dangerous.

Windows with external insect screens are very safe.

That said, larger windows tend to kill more birds. Windows that reflect vegetation are likely to cause more collisions.

But if if you’ve got a bird feeder, that should be your priority.

Birds can be startled by, outdoor cats or by hawks. And they don’t know what direction they’re going in.

They smack into that glass. So that would be your priority. Yeah.

And, sticking to that feeder question, Andrew, do we know is there is our data

or evidence on us a real specified safe distance for windows from bird feeders?

That’s a good question too. So the three rule, sort of 3 or 30ft, is a pretty good,

pretty good example, of what works, thinking about placing bird feeders

very close to windows, sort of within three feet of windows or about 30ft away with the idea that those close windows are close enough

that if, excuse me, those close feeders, are close enough if they’re within three feet, so that birds can kind of graze off

if they do happen to, impact a window, and then if it’s farther than 30ft away

that they’re going to have time to avoid that window. Of course, obviously having those that glass treated, is going to make a big difference.

But in terms of where those feeders are very close to the windows and then also quite a bit farther away, three feet within three feet or farther than 30ft.

Those are sort of the good examples. And I should add that, in addition to thinking about where the bird feeders are

and how close or far from the windows, there are, you can think about, other kind of ancillary elements that go along with that.

Like if you have plants inside, for example, move those away from the window, like also, you know, more than three feet

away from the window. That would be great. And so too, if you’re planning vegetation outside, follow that 30ft rule again as well.

Like keep it far away from the glass so that birds are staying away from that, you know, whether treated glass or not.

Those are kind of good rules. That 330 rule works really well for both of those cases.

Great. Thank you. I’ll say I’m going to pass this one to Brendan. Do bird collision prevention markers lose their effectiveness over time?

Like, how long do they typically last? How often should they be replaced? What do we know about that?

Great question. There’s a wide diversity of ways you can treat glass to make it safe for birds.

There’s also things that you can put on the outside of a window without even touching the glass, like an exterior solar shade

that can also reduce collisions. It really does vary from material to material, but it’s important that when you’re choosing a solution for your window,

you think about the durability and the longevity of what you’re applying. For example, there are materials you can buy at many bird

feeding stores and hardware stores that are decals or static cling, stickers that can be applied on windows

if those have a UV or ultraviolet signal in them. It’s important to note the manufacturer advises those need to be replaced

every four months, so you’re going to be continually having to buy more of those. I am a big fan of drawing on windows with ink,

and I found that oil based paint markers, there’s a variety of companies that produce these are extremely durable

and they’ll last for several years outside. So think about this before you buy. Look into the description and the warranty information provided

by the manufacturer. And ideally choose a solution that’s going to last many years.

Yeah. And I would just add to that, I just, treated my own windows. I did a do it yourself project.

My husband and I, took about 2.5 hours for us to do the a copying bird savers.

We did, I think, roughly about 100ft² of window. It cost us $18.

So, the, the idea that window treatment has to be, terribly expensive is, is false, right?

These things, like Brendan said, you can have, a fun project with kids.

Tempera paint. Couple of bucks. You can, if you go, to a copy of Bird Savers

website, they actually encourage people to do it themselves. They have a video that shows you in about three minutes how to do it.

So, it doesn’t have to be expensive. Okay. Let’s see, we’ve gotten some.

And with respect to some of the products we’re talking about, the feather friendly and and bird savers, we will send links to these products tomorrow.

But remember we’re going to do that random drawing. So some lucky winner might win $500 worth of product.

So I want to wait for that email to, to buy product. So, this question is for Andrew.

How should individuals go about approaching companies or big buildings?

Maybe even, campus buildings about collision prevention?

That’s a really good question. And it’s often, it’s a challenge to sort of think about that, because when you see a dead bird,

your first feeling is usually, oh my God, this is an awful thing. And then you may get very angry, very quickly.

So the first thing to remember about speaking to anybody, for example, a building manager or, somebody that when it comes to,

operations staff or anything like that, trying to be courteous and just engage and say, sort of inform about the problem, like,

did you know, you know, your windows are treated. And I found this beautiful, whatever the bird might happen to be, if you happen to have one there, to show

that always makes an impact and I think can start the discussion. If it’s not about having a bird in hand and just going to

to speak with somebody because you notice a building or you notice windows in a particular place where they’re not

treated, that engagement in multiple different ways. Yes, the building managers and the operations staff to try to figure out

who’s responsible for the decisions that are operating the way that are, choosing how the building operates and who has responsibility.

They’re going slowly and respectfully through that process is a great one. At the same time, it never hurts to engage

with a thoughtful email or phone call. Even sometimes as high up the chain as you can go.

Sometimes it may be the head of the company or trying to reach out at that level, that trying to do both of these things

and a few things in between at once, I think is really, really important. Because a lot of people, even though we on

the call, are starting to understand quite a lot about the ways that we can solve this problem, and that there are

relatively simple solutions that can make a big difference. That’s not the case for everybody, and it’s not hard to educate.

So I think that’s kind of the key element is approach. Respectfully think about who actually makes the decisions and sort of

thoughtfully go through the process at multiple different kind of levels. Right? I think that’s kind of the best way to to do things.

And also, I think it’s important to to have your facts straight and to be able to think about them and talk about them

in a way that’s grounded in the science of what we understand. The numbers, and, and also just kind of convey that in as simple away as possible

and that there’s a solution that doesn’t have to be very expensive to do this. And it’s a win all around.

That’s kind of how I approach it. All right. Thank you Andrew. So there’s a lot of questions coming in the Q&A about the difference

between reflection aggression and collision.

We’ve probably all seen especially item cardinals are really big. They haven’t they’re often pecking at windows and mirrors.

Right. Brendan, do you want to speak to that. Yeah. Happy to. And tis the season. Every spring there’s certain species of birds that set up, territory.

They’re breeding territory. And sometimes what will happen is they’ll come across a reflection

on a window or a car mirror or something like that, and they see themselves in the mirror,

but they mistake it for another bird intruding in their territory. And typically they will respond with fear or with aggression.

That aggression will sometimes take the form of them pecking at the glass repeatedly flying out the window over and over again.

And although that’s less lethal for birds than colliding with glass they just didn’t see in their path, it does cause them

to expend a lot of energy and time that otherwise would be spent on critical functions, like breeding or feeding their offspring.

And so the solutions for that problem are a little different. Whereas with treating windows to prevent collisions by installing markers

so that the birds won’t try and pass through with the territorial aggression, you really want to reduce the reflection on the glass.

You want to almost mute it. And you can do that by marking the outside surface with something opaque.

Covering it with soapy water or taping up newspaper can help a lot. Or if you have a bright lamp on the inside of the window

and you shine it outwards, that can also mute the reflection. And typically the animal will move on within a couple of days.

I want to express also that this is not just unique to birds. All wild animals have this challenge with reflections

because we’ve created illusions of mirrors and habitat all over the world. There have been videos posted on YouTube of bears

and moose and even fish attacking reflections on glass. So it’s something we all have to take responsibility for in our backyards.

So important. Thank you. Brendan. Okay, this one I’m going to pass to Christine.

What are some good resources for teaching people about bird glass collisions? Do we have ready made lesson plans?

Are there resources for educators, school groups, that sort of thing to raise awareness on this topic, Christine, that there are definitely resources.

Flaps website is is one place to go. American Bird Conservancy’s bird smart glass sorg is another.

They’re on both sites. There are, slide sets that people can download.

There are fliers that summarize information there.

Is really information for almost anything you want to do. So I definitely recommend, you know, that you check those sites both out.

Right. Okay. Well, we are we’re blazing through these questions. This is great.

You guys are really succinct. Brendan, is it important to report residential collisions?

Dead birds and, if so, like, where can people report this?

Absolutely. This is really, really important. For me personally, when I find a bird, I want to make sure that its death

hasn’t been for nothing. Right. So by providing data to support science and conservation efforts,

you can make that unfortunate loss count for something larger. And reporting collisions can be done through a number of different platforms.

We recommend a website called Bird mapper.org, which is a database that’s maintained by Flap Canada.

It’s cited by governments. It’s used very widely, and it’s exclusively dedicated to logging locations of bird collisions with class,

including ones where the bird has been killed or where the bird has been injured and survived. Another tool that people might use and be familiar with is iNaturalist.

There’s a number of, projects on iNaturalist that allow you to photograph a bird and submit it,

and that will also help you with identifying the species that you found. So I would recommend those, too. In terms of the importance, researchers are constantly looking

to community science databases to help them address questions about where collisions are happening on the landscape,

and especially if you’re trying to advocate at a local or community level for policies to deal with this issue,

people need to understand, especially makers, that this is real. This is happening in your neighborhood,

and there needs to be data to demonstrate empirically. There are records and people are paying attention to this

and want to drive change. So the data that you provide by reporting collisions can be very, very useful

and important. Great. Thank you. Andrew. Or we I think you had mentioned about the seasonality.

Are there certain times of day, and which of the seasons are the most dangerous for birds colliding with glass?

Also a good question. So as you know, as I mentioned, collisions happen every day of the year for certain.

And also nights of the year, however, it’s these periods of bird migration, spring and fall,

when the numbers of collisions definitely increase and fall, when they increase a lot more than in spring.

Now, part of the reason for the collisions being higher during these periods of migration, birds are obviously on the move.

More birds are on the move. They’re moving in the atmosphere between, takeoff and landing.

When they take off to migrate at night, they go up in the atmosphere when they come down and obviously land

in stopover habitat, there’s all sorts of opportunity to collide in places where this infrastructure is.

And there’s glass. Right. So, for certain periods of the very early morning

when birds are kind of repositioning or re determining or landing after a night’s migration during these migratory periods, critical period

when it’s really important for birds to perceive that there is reflective or transparent surface, right, that they should be avoiding when, when that when the glass is treated. Now,

just to kind of clarify further, the fall is a more dangerous period for birds.

More collisions happen in the fall. And you think about what happens after after the summer and you move into fall migration.

You have a lot more young birds. You’ve had that incredible, productivity that all of those breeding birds,

have have produced during their summer and their breeding period. And these birds are migrating for the first time.

There is some element of experience that goes into migration. There also, obviously, are cues that are refined over time.

And young birds, when they’re migrating, have real serious challenges with both the light pollution side in terms of attraction and disorientation.

In fact, likely more so than adults. And then, of course, from the glass perspective, that primary issue

of interacting with the glass that’s not treated and colliding. So those periods of migration, we see elevated collisions.

Right. Great time for awareness and to really think about, spreading the word if, if you see untreated glass,

and then the fall even more so, even more important of even better time to spread the word, because that’s the real serious time

when even larger numbers of birds are colliding with windows. Okay,

great. Great information. We’re getting a lot of questions also about UV glass products.

Christine, I know you, know a lot about this. Do you want to address the UV glass issue?

The products? Sure. Maybe 20 years ago, people started to document

the fact that at least some birds could see in the ultraviolet. This shouldn’t have been such a big surprise,

because insects and fish can also see in the ultraviolet. It’s really mammals that are unusual, including humans

not being able to see ultraviolet. But it seemed like this might be the answer,

that everybody was looking for, that we could make ultraviolet, visible materials that birds would see and people wouldn’t.

So you would get around this question of what is it going to look like on my windows?

Unfortunately, not all birds do see ultraviolet. Songbirds do.

But raptors don’t. Pigeons and dogs don’t. So it’s never going to be the best solution.

And we know that there’s not a lot of ultraviolet early in the morning. We know there’s not a lot of ultraviolet on overcast days

when the UV index is low, and ultraviolet materials aren’t going to work very well.

If there isn’t a lot of UV in the environment, they may not work as well on the northern side of a building or under a deep overhang.

So there are certainly times, when ultraviolet materials are useful. There’s at least one do it yourself version.

And there are other types of glass that are manufactured with UV patterns on them.

But they would never be the first choice. If what you want to do is stop collisions,

and they’re probably one of the more expensive choices. Isn’t that right? Definitely can be expensive. You’re replacing glass.

It’s not a it’s not necessarily a retrofit. Right. Well, there is one UV retrofit bird divert okay,

okay. Well, while we’re on the subject of, maybe designing, Christine,

are there guidelines or regulation for designing bird friendly buildings that you can point people to?

There are guidelines. I’ve been teaching classes to architects for about 15 years now.

And we have materials on bird smart glass cork. There’s a, publication bird friendly building design,

which summarizes a lot of it that you can download. This is the, the basis,

for some of the, the laws and ordinances that, have been passed in different places

at the state level, sometimes at the city level or the county level, to require bird friendly design.

And it’s not it’s important to realize bird friendly design isn’t just a glass swap.

You don’t want to design a building and then say, okay, I’m going to change the glass because that’s expensive.

But you want to do is start thinking about birds from the very, very start of your design process.

And if you do that, bird friendly building is budget neutral. There’s a lot of overlap between, strategies that people use to control heat

and light, and strategies that will help reduce bird collisions, for example. There, are strategies

for privacy, and for defense, that also, can be used to make buildings safer birds.

So bird friendly buildings, people have been building them since they were building buildings.

You just have to think about it carefully. Somebody asked about insect screens. If you put the screens on the outside of your windows, it stops the reflections.

Birds will bounce off them. It’s a great way to make, a building bird friendly.

Okay. Thank you. Christine, I had a few more questions about decals, and,

let’s see, the questions. Are the sun catch iridescent decals more effective than your typical ordinary silhouette style decals?

Does the color of the decals matter? And can you clean your windows with the decals on them?

Brendan, you want to take a shot at that one? Oh, boy. Well, we’re still learning in real time about the science of how birds

see these things, which is a bit of what I specialized in for my PhD research. I would say a general rule of thumb to follow is

you want the marker to be visible to the birds, right? If you can’t see the marker on the window, there’s a good likelihood

that birds will have a hard time seeing it, too. And so we talk about trying to provide what’s described

as high contrast for most windows on buildings. The glass is going to appear somewhat dark during the daytime

because it’s brighter outside than inside. And so therefore light colored markers such as white dots

tend to stand out quite a bit. If you use something translucent, like, iridescent decals or,

something like tape, it might still be effective, but it might not stand out quite as much as white.

So where possible, try and really bump up that contrast if you can. There have been technologies developed that use, other colors.

There’s even orange markers for windows. Really. We try and emphasize that glass can be used creatively as a canvas,

and you should not feel, restricted to one solution or another. Think outside the box and just make sure whatever you apply as the right spacing

is ideally on the outside surface of the glass and is able to stand out under variable lighting conditions.

Yeah. And I would love to just emphasize the spacing issue before we, we close out.

If the if it’s a two dimensional deterrent and it’s being affixed directly to the window,

then we, strongly recommend that two by two spacing. So again, if you’re using decals, for example, you’d have to really cover

your whole window with those kinds of detailed decals. That’s why the dots might might be more attractive all around.

If you’re using, a three dimensional kind of deterrent like the a Copi and Bird sabers,

which are simply paracord, those can be 3 to 4in apart because birds can see those as a three dimensional object.

So the spacing is critical. Okay. I think we probably have time for maybe one more question.

What? Okay, here we go. What else besides treating windows and turning out lights?

What else can people do to really help, protect our feathered friends?

Brendon, do you want to take that one? Yeah, I’m happy to take that. You know, I’m so heartened by the number of people

that tuned in today and just the sheer number of people that are interested in this topic and working on it. There are more people aware of this problem

than there has ever been in history. And birds have been colliding with glass for over 200 years since we started putting it on structures.

So there’s a lot of reason to be hopeful. But the reason that that is growing so quickly is because of the conversations

that we’re having. It’s because we’re creating visible examples of solutions in communities everywhere so that people can interact

with them, they can understand them, they can relate to them. If you go to the trouble of treating your glass

or advocating for a solution in your community, it’s really, really helpful for you to be part of telling that story.

Take pride in the work that you’re doing. Tell your friends. Tell your family. Offer to help people do it themselves and the more times

we talk about this, the more we can expand our impact. Just remember that every bird that we save from preventing a collision

with the building that bird gets to survive. Go on into the world, have babies, bring joy to people throughout its migratory range,

and the positive impact that you have with that simple treatment of your window ripples through time, through the birds that you’re saving.

Thank you. Thank you, Brandon, for that. Well, I think we are right about the top of the hour.

This has been a fascinating webinar. I, I can’t believe how many questions we’ve gotten through.
Thank you. Panelists. Thank you, Andrew, Christine and Brendan for sharing your expertise with us today.

Thank you for everyone who took the time to join us. We hope you learned something new.
Please share what you learned with friends and family to spread awareness of collisions and what we can do to prevent them As Brendan said,

we strongly believe that there is a lot of momentum around this issue. It it may have, started many, many years ago,

but it really culminated with that McCormick place incident that Andrew spoke of during his presentation.

As horrible as that was, that seems to have been a real catalyst for getting, public involvement and public pressure

on, some very public buildings to do more to, protect windows.

And as Andrew also mentioned, we know it’s not just those big, huge skyscrapers.

Those are only 1% of the problem. The residential homes are,

almost half of the half of the collisions happening at residential homes. So we all have a part to play in this.

And, once again, thank you all for being here. And we will have more resources to share in the coming days.

End of transcript