Much has been written about collisions of birds with radio-towers and tall buildings, especially during migration. Now a new study documents another large source of bird mortality—collisions with window glass in residential and low-rise buildings.
Indeed, Scott Loss, now at Oklahoma State University, and his colleagues estimate that some 600 million birds have fatal collisions with windows each year, with 44% of those occurring in residential buildings. Only house-cats are a greater source of human-induced mortality among wild birds.
“Well we found in our recent systematic review of studies that had looked at bird-window collisions that, while on a per building basis individual residences or homes don’t kill a very large number of birds – we estimate between 1.3 – 3.1 per building on average – but when taken cumulatively across all U.S. residences, this really adds up to a huge overall amount of mortality. We estimate somewhere between 159 – 378 million birds each year in the U.S. are killed at these individual households.”
My own experience tells me that some windows are death-traps, whereas collisions with other windows are rare. Observant homeowners will quickly learn if they have deadly windows. You can reduce collisions by installing Orniflux, an ultraviolet reflective glass manufactured by a company in the United Kingdom.
Unlike humans, birds can see ultraviolet wavelengths. When my wife and I replaced our picture windows with ultraviolet reflective glass, bird morality dropped dramatically. Using bird-friendly glass is one small way we can help bird life in all of North America.
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Web Extra
Scott Loss, Assistant Professor of Global Change Ecology and Management at Oklahoma State University, offers some suggestions for homeowners to minimize the impact their windows have on birds…
[audio:http://wamcradio.org/EarthWise/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/loss_web_extra.mp3|titles=loss_web_extra].
Web Links
Loss et al. The Condor 116(1):8-23. 2014
doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1650/CONDOR-13-090.1
Photo, posted May 3, 2007, courtesy of TheFixer via Flickr.
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