Update on Bird Strikes
by Kathy Fell
Earlier this month, I attended the Cornell Lab webinar on Fall Migration: Tips to help birds on their way. I learned some new things about preventing bird strikes.
About 1 billion birds are killed annually by flying into reflective surfaces. Most bird strikes occur during fall migration, when birds are tired from flying all night and are in unfamiliar territory. Window strikes occur mostly where a bird sees foliage reflected ahead. I took a look at my windows today. Even though the glass is not entirely spotless (oops), I can easily see how a bird might be fooled.
Birds are adept at flying through foliage. The typical songbird needs about a 4" slot to fly through. Cornell Lab recommends the American Bird Conservancy site. This site has 11 pages of tested products and techniques that can be used to break up reflections. To break up the reflections, window treatments need to be applied to the outside of the window, leaving 2" spaces, too small for the bird to attempt to fly through.
On the inexpensive end is to draw vertical lines on the outside of the window using an oil based marker. I'm looking at the Feather Friendly product, which is a tape of evenly spaced white dots that you stick on the outside of the window to create a grid of dots. I did the math. I have over 300 sq. ft. of glass, though I've only noticed bird strikes at a few of the windows. I think I'll do a little product testing myself this year......
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