Things That Go Bump in the Day or Night

Shortly after 9/11 when the anthrax scare was working its way up the panic scale, I heeded the advice to buy bottle water and place it in a "secure," windowless room in the event of a catastrophe. Of course, as my kids are quick to point out, the exercise was ridiculous (how long could we really survive in one room?), but in the process of designating a "secure" room, I discovered that our house has very few rooms without windows. In addition to being a poor choice to wait out a bio-hazard, this design turns out to be a serious hazard to birds.

According to a recent article in the Inquirer, "the very qualities that people prize in glass--transparency and reflectiveness--make it invisible to birds, who mistake the reflections for reality." The result? They often fly directly into the glass surfaces, and literally knock themselves out. Forever.

Muhlenberg College ornithologist, Daniel Klein, Jr., is partly responsible for bringing this topic to the attention of the Audubon Society. According to the Inquirer, Klein calculated that building crashes cause between 100 million and a billion avian deaths each year in the U. S. "From a population standpoint, it's a bleeding that doesn't get replaced," he noted.

In Philadelphia, a recent study found that the mirror-like front of Temple University's student center building is especially hazardous to birds. At Swarthmore College, the glass encrusted science building has frosted dots etched into its windows to make them safer for birds. While it has proved effective, the decoration added about $40,000 to the building's cost.

"People ask me if we really spent $40,000 on birds, and I say, no, we saved hundreds of thousands of dollars over the life of the building," notes engineering professor E. Carr Everbach, who lobbied long and hard to get those dots installed. Science buildings have high cooling costs, even in winter, and the "fritted" or patterned glass blocks about 60% of sunlight that triggers the A/C even in winter.

For those of us with window filled homes, there are several alternatives to deter birds from crashing into them. These include hanging dangling objects outside problem windows, rubbing a bar of soap on the outside to make them less reflective, or installing stickers in a pattern spaced no more than two inches apart.

On the drawing table are such things as a roller that paints dots on the outside surface of glass and a bird proofing window film. Until then, hang a few wind chimes near any walls of glass you may have and be sure to position bird feeders either less than 3 feet or more than 30 feet from windows.

That way any thuds you hear will legitimately send you running for that bottled water!