Window Strikes

It gets bad during migration.  An unfortunate and unimaginable number of birds strike windows each year and die as the result of the collision.  In the downtown cores of cities like Toronto, campaigns have been launched to encourage the lights to be turned off of downtown office towers at night.  Even so, volunteers head out early each morning and see if their are any window strike victims that can be rescued.


Things are just as bad with our homes.  As we prefer to live in natural settings, often our large windows reflect the image of the sky and fool birds as they fly into them.  To break up the image of the reflected sky, we install decals and hang ribbons over the glass,  but these have limited effect.  Way too many small birds die in this way.

Julie Zickefoose, a fabulous artist as been dealing with the issue of window strikes from her home studio in Ohio.  She writes of her experience and offers a solution.  It seems as though the most effective means of preventing bird strikes was by stretching crop screening over a PVC frame.  While this is certainly not the one and only solution, it could reduce the death of migrants in homes that are particularly prone to this problem.
http://www.birdwatchersdigest.com/pdfs/JZ_COL_True_Nature.pdf