It’s sometimes overwhelming to consider all the threats to wildlife on our planet and how we may feel we can’t do much about them. But when it comes to birds, there are several positive steps we can take right where we live. One of these is preventing birds from colliding with the windows of our own house or apartment.
Research in both the U.S. and Canada has shown that collisions are second only to cats in causing the direct death of birds. Birds collide with all sorts of things, from transmission lines to communication towers to vehicles. As many as 1 billion birds die each year by hitting our windows.
We have lived in our current house in Boise since 1992. Our first dead bird was a northern flicker who flew into our big picture window in the living room. I heard the bird hit and found it sadly lying on the porch below. I immediately acquired a translucent window decal — more on those in a minute — and placed it where the bird had hit. You can often tell where a bird hits because it leaves behind feather dust.
A couple of years later, I was crushed to find a calliope hummingbird lying in the same place. I didn’t hear the collision. I had another decal which I placed about a foot lower than the first one. Since that sad day, I’ve not had another mortality on that window.
The only other window that has been a problem, but which has not led to the death of a bird as far as I know, is on the back of the house not far from our suite of bird feeders. This is a tall, vertical window adjacent to the patio door. After a pine siskin bounced off this window, I did not have another decal handy to place on the window. Instead, I hung a long strip of plastic surveyor’s tape down the middle of the window. I attached it to the outside of the upper window frame with a simple household stapler. The gently waving of the tape showed birds something is there to avoid. I later acquired more decals, affixed two, and have had no problem since.
This last case illustrates how one window may be a problem while another nearby is not. We’ve never had a collision on the much bigger patio doors right next to the problem window.
This difference is most likely a result of what a bird sees due to the particular angle between its viewpoint and the window. Birds hit windows for a couple of reasons. They may see straight through them, which is the probable cause for our living room window. That flicker may have thought it was a straight flight from the front of house to the backyard, visible through an equally large dining room window in the back.
Another reason is simply that they see sky or trees reflected in a window and don’t know they are reflections. It seems likely birds don’t know about reflections. American robins, northern cardinals and other species will fight themselves in car mirrors and other reflective surfaces.
What always gets to me about the death of a bird is the enormous time and energy the parents put into that individual to get it to where it’s flying on its own. Months of selecting a nest site, building a nest, laying eggs, protecting young in the nest, and then even feeding them for days after they fledge all go down the drain in an instant when it hits a window. It really is a tragedy at its own scale.
I’m guessing we could teach crows and other smart birds the difference between reflections of the sky and the sky. But your average wild bird has no notion of these concepts. Consider birds killed by flying into power lines or guy wires on a communication tower. The world did not include such things over the millions of years of their evolution. Birds have no prior evolutionary experience with them. One can hope evolution will continue to work — it surely will — and that future birds will be ever more adept at looking for things in their flight paths.
Back to the angle between a feeder and a window. It’s sometimes also an easy fix to move your feeder(s) just a couple of feet one way or another. This changes what reflections birds may see and may stop them from hitting.
Another idea is to move feeders closer to the house. When birds are flushed from a feeder, they don’t have time to gather much speed if the feeder is near a window. If they do hit it, they may be going slowly enough to just bounce off. Feeders placed farther away allow flushed birds to gather more speed, which could then result in fatal collisions.
To me, the best idea is to just put decals on any windows where you’ve noted a collision. And remember you don’t have to witness a collision to know if they are happening. Just look at your windows from the outside to see if there is any evidence of bird collisions. My favorite decals are translucent and attach on the outside by simple static cling. They are barely noticeable from inside the house, and they come in the shapes of flowers, hummingbirds, butterflies, for example. So, even if you do notice them, they’re more like decorations.
Other decals are solid, black silhouettes, often of birds of prey, which make windows highly visible even from some distance. These might be better for high windows where bigger birds, such as accipiters and falcons, might be coming in fast. The Foothills Learning Center uses a number of these.
There are a number of websites with information on preventing window collisions. These also offer products, such as decals, which can prevent bird deaths. My favorite site is the American Bird Conservancy (abcbirds.org/). ABC not only has information and products, but it has also been actively involved in collision research, outreach and improving public policy for decades.
There are around 144 million houses in the U.S. and another 21 million apartments. Imagine if we could eliminate bird window collision deaths on all these structures! Remember, you don’t have to have bird feeders to have a problem window. My first personal example illustrates this — there were no feeders anywhere near our living room.
Like keeping cats indoors and planting native flowering and fruiting plants in our yards, each of us can contribute directly to the future of our birds with the slightest efforts. Let’s make 2024 a better one for birds!