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Expert Says Glass Is Major Threat to Birds
dlkf writes "According this AP article, 'Glass is ubiquitous and it's indiscriminate, killing the fit and the unfit... estimates (are) that collisions with glass kill up to 1 billion birds a year in the United States alone.' First wind turbines and now glass. What will they come up with next..."
Just like walls and other cars are a major threat to drivers, porn sites to computer geeks, and a job in the real world for all those heavily pierced freaks. I don't consider this THAT newsworthy... :)
(Not Trolling, just burning some midnight karma. :))
Viva La Revolucion! Buy a Mac!
...can't hurt you so relax Bob, and keep flying sou..[THUD!]
"Look mommy a dead parrot!"
NarratorDan
"If you're not confused by quantum mechanics, you really don't understand it." - Niels Bohr
Ban Glass !
The greedy Glass manufacturing Corperations are out to ruin our envrionment !.
Im not here now... Im out KILLING pepperoni
I used to have a bird that crashed into my window every morning at 6:30 sharp. Then one day it stopped. I wondered if it moved but I guess it died.
/* oops I accidentally made a comment, sorry */
The problem, of course, is not the glass; it's this pesky desire of ours to have transparent artificial barriers as part of our dwellings---something which will not go away.
Much of the time, my sympathies lie mostly with the animals; but in this case, they're kinda on their own. Survival of the fittest...
May they all live long enough to have more sex than I do...
(Which leads me to a deep thought: right now, at this very moment, millions (billions?) of creatures are having sex. None of them are me.)
Goddamn I need sleep...
Eating a leading cause of Heart Disease, Wisconsin man discovers that a red cape will not let you fly, Running full force into a wall "really DOES hurt" according to Arkansas resident, and Kids say the cutest things!!
yeesh.
Sera
Slashdot, where armchair scientists get shouted down and armchair theologians get modded up.
So do domestic cats. What of it.
Call it evolution in action
Choose your allies carefully, it is highly unlikely you will be held accountable for the actions of your enemies
In any event, this doesn't affect me. My cats will take down anything within a 100-ft radius of the house, so my windows stay thud-free.
Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
Secondly, most birds that conservationists (and yes, we are as scientific and geeky as the average /. er) are really worried about don't live in built-up areas so the impact with glass is likely to be less of a problem.
Thirdly, window stickers (especially those shaped like a hawk) can sharply reduce the level of impacts especially against windows that look like a fly-through to somewhere else.
And finally, when you find a bird that hit a window, someone will say it's broken its neck. Not so. Birds' necks are much longer and more flexible than most people realise until they see a lolling corpse. The commonest cause of death against a window is brain haemorrage.
I dunno. I love birds. A little bbq sauce, an open flame, delicious.
Marxism is the opiate of dumbasses
..."smart" birds avoid running Windows ;)
Ron
My place of employment has glassed-in corridors between buildings, some of those corridors being multi-story. They have solved the bird problem by placing stick-on silhouettes of some sort of predatory bird, one on every other pane, or so. I haven't seen or heard of a collision, since.
But back when they were happening, the birds left a beautiful dust pattern on the windows as they hit. It captured incredible levels of detail to the feathers, etc.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
The bird probably survived because woodpeckers should be well equipped to deal with head-shocking events.
It's not often that you get to see these birds close up, not to mention hold them and quitely look at them. Quite an experience.
Flourescent (adj): smelling like ground wheat.
This was twenty-odd years ago, in Paraburdoo. Cat would pretend to be dead, lying in the hot, hot sun until a crow got to the point of actually reaching out to have just a little... BLAM! rude shock. Same cat would regularly beat up and chase away quite large dogs. Never seemed to fight with ours, though.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Thankfully, a low-tech solution is available - just put a damn sticker on the glass on or about average eye level. Works every time.
Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
She used to have a real problem with the neighborhood birds picking on her cat and stealing its food. So she goes to one of those "Everything 99 Cents" sh8tholes and picks up a long cord of cheap bright yellow tinsel, the kind you'd spiral around a Christmas tree. She takes that tinsel and wraps it all over her porch railings- up and down around and around, so that it's everywhere. I don't know how much the neighbors' property values suffer but it sure keeps the birds away. It's almost as if they have taste. They don't want to be seen anywhere near that stuff.
From Pale Fire by V. Nabokov:
I was the shadow of the waxwing slain
By the false azure in the windowpane;
I was the smudge of ashen fluff--and I
Lived on, flew on, in the reflected sky.
And from the inside, too, I'd duplicate
Myself, my lamp, an apple on a plate:
Uncurtaining the night, I'd let dark glass
Hang all the furniture above the grass,
And how delightful when a fall of snow
Covered my glimpse of lawn and reached up so
As to make chair and bed exactly stand
Upon that snow, out in that crystal land!
Great book!