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..."

Comments

Legislation is the answer

[Catskul]

Ban Glass !
The greedy Glass manufacturing Corperations are out to ruin our envrionment !.

not much can be done about this

[bersl2]

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...

Re:not much can be done about this

[bhima]

Here in Austria we have the shadows of predator birds on most glass stuff that the goverment puts up. Not on houses or buildings but on highway dividers and bus stops and things like that. I supose it helps, but I really don't know.

Re:not much can be done about this

[ajagci]

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.

You're right--it won't go away. Just like that pesky desire to pollute or to take over all arable land. However, desires can be curbed, and it is a mark of civilization that we do curb our desires and don't live out every one of them.

In the case of glass, there are plenty of architectural ways in which we can have brightly lit dwellings with gorgeous views without creating traps for birds.

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...

Humans are fittest, for now, so, yes, we can kill off all other (large) animals. Trouble is, in the long run, that is not an adaptive strategy for us: we are dependent on a functioning environment. So, what you suggest, namely not worrying about the survival of animals, is, in the long run, maladaptive for us: it will bring about our own extinction.

Re:not much can be done about this

[cujo_1111]

Do you have anything to stop the kangaroos too? :)

Re:not much can be done about this

[ajagci]

The article itself talked about some alternatives. In fact, that was the point of the article: it didn't say "no more glass", it said "let's make an effort to make glass more bird-safe". Other alternatives I have seen are silhouettes of predators, nets, screens, careful gardening, and various patterned reflective coatings on the outside.

Of course, simply having vertical blinds, Venitian blinds, or sheer curtains on the inside will probably already reduce the problem: they look like a solid surface from the outside but stil give you a good view from the inside. Even bug screens probably make windows a little more visible and less reflective from the outside and cushion any collision.

I suspect birds hitting windows is mostly a problem with modern office buildings, where there is lots of glass, plenty of energy-efficient (=mirror-like) outside coatings, no curtains, and no bug screens.

In Other News...

[Seraphim_72]

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

What of it

[gnalre]

So do domestic cats. What of it.

Call it evolution in action

Birds?

[Captain Splendid]

What about people? Doesn't everybody here have at least one relative/friend who this has happened to?

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.

Birds and windows

[moorhens]

First, a billion birds sounds like an over-estimate, but even if it isn't it probably won't make any serious difference to any bird populations. Every year, most birds die, which is why they need to raise lots of young to keep going at all. Previous studies of birds vs windows, birds vs traffic, birds vs cats generally show that those that die are effectively part of the natural surplus rather than this being new deaths. Not much comfort for the individual bird, but hey.

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.

Re:and killing birds is bad... why?

[ocelotbob]

I dunno. I love birds. A little bbq sauce, an open flame, delicious.

Another reason not to use Windows!

[Ron Bennett]

..."smart" birds avoid running Windows ;)

Ron

But the impact patterns are BEAUTIFUL!

[dpilot]

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.

Just do what my grandmother does

[MillionthMonkey]

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.

Poem

[joebok]

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!