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MiSustainable Holland: Window precautions save birds’ lives

By Sydney Quillian
ODC Network
By taking action to prevent bird-window collisions, species like the gray catbird and many others can be protected.

Each year, millions of birds are killed in the United States by flying into windows.

Birds are an important part of every ecosystem because they pollinate plants, maintain insect populations, and disperse seeds. Protecting birds in our area is an effective way to maintain a healthy ecosystem.

To understand how to prevent birds from colliding with your windows, it is important to first understand why it happens.

During the day, light reflects off the glass surface of a window, reflecting the things around the glass. For example, if you have trees or shrubs near your windows, the glass will reflect them. Windows also reflect the sky during the day. Because of these reflections, birds perceive the window as the outdoor environment and fly into the window.

Products like dots spaced a few inches apart break up the reflective surface of a window to help birds avoid colliding into it.

While most of us typically witness birds flying into windows during the day, it can also happen at night.

When it’s dark outside, birds are attracted to sources of light. If lights inside the home shine through the window, birds will follow the source of light until they collide with the window.

Whether day or night, because most birds colliding with windows are flying 20 to 30 mph, collisions are most often fatal.

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Numerous things can be done to prevent daytime collisions.

Be sure to keep feeders clean and to provide multiple feeding stations.

Reducing the amount of greenery around windows is one solution. If birds do not see trees or shrubs reflected in the window, they are less likely to think it is the outdoor environment. Also, birds can perceive house plants as outdoor greenery, so reducing the amount of indoor plants near the windows can also help.

An even more effective way to deter daytime collisions is breaking up the reflective surface of your windows. There are many adhesive products on the market to apply to windows that break up reflections, such as these at birdwatchingdaily.com. For the best results, these adhesives need to be applied relatively close together.

For a more affordable and less permanent option, using suction cups to hang strings of feathers down the exterior surface of the window can break up reflections as well.

Christine Sheppard and the American Bird Conservancy shows how washable tempera paint can be used on windows to stop birds from crashing into them. The paint, which can be applied with stencils or freehand, breaks up the reflections of trees and shrubbery that birds fly toward believing they are real. Christine Sheppard/American Bird Conservancy via AP

Preventing light from shining through the windows is the most effective way to prevent collisions at night. To do this, close the blinds once it gets dark outside and turn off exterior lights when possible.

There are many ways to help prevent birds from fatally colliding with your windows, so find the ones that work best for you and your home. Preventing birds from flying into your windows is an effective way to maintain bird populations in the area and sustain our ecosystems.

If you find yourself with an injured bird, contact the Wildlife Rehab Center in Grand Rapids at wildlife-rehab-center.org or (616) 361-6109.

— Sydney Quillian is a watershed intern with the ODC Network, studying communication studies and environmental and sustainability studies at Grand Valley State University.

About this series

The MiSustainable Holland column is a collection of community voices sharing updates about local sustainability initiatives.