Plate-glass windows are estimated to kill hundreds of millions of songbirds every year. As this is a cross-disciplinary challenge involving avian behavior, building design, and campus sustainability, Biology professor Mike Butler and Engineering professor David Brandes teamed up with a number of students to better understand the extent of this problem on our campus and to develop some effective ways to reduce fatalities here. Our dataset demonstrated that window strikes were clustered in spring and fall at some of the newer campus buildings that had extensive reflective glass (e.g. Hugel, Skillman, Kirby sports center). A variety of species were affected as illustrated in the photos later on this page — surprisingly, hummingbirds were the most frequently killed species. Here is a presentation we gave at the 2018 LVAIC Sustainability Conference summarizing our efforts.

We joined with a network of colleges and universities across North America doing similar studies as part of an Ecological Research as Education Network project. Our collaborative project’s first publication in Biological Conservation is linked below:

• Continent-wide analysis of how urbanization affects bird-window collision mortality in North America

Fortunately, this is a problem with some relatively inexpensive solutions. In collaboration with our team and alumnus Jeff Acopian, Plant Operations installed Acopian Birdsavers on several campus buildings as a pilot program to test their effectiveness in reducing collisions. You may have noticed these on Hugel and Williams Visual Arts. The results have been very encouraging, as collisions have been reduced to near zero at Hugel. In addition, we convinced the College to add Feather Friendly (www.featherfriendly.com) window film to the front of Skillman library facing the Quad, which has also significantly reduced bird collisions. And finally, the College now has a written policy that new construction must include fritted glass for bird safety – see Rockwell Integrated Science Center, Acopian Engineering 5th floor expansion, Markle parking deck, and most recently the new Simon Center. We are immensely gratified that our research and advocacy led to these substantial changes on campus.

Links:

EREN collaborative Bird-window Collisions Project
Dan Klem’s Birds and Windows site at Muhlenberg College
American Bird Conservancy’s Glass Collisions site
Acopian Birdsavers
LEED pilot credit for bird collision deterrence

A sampling of pics from campus before retrofitting:

Video clip, Sept 12, 2013 next to Hugel – if the pictures don’t disturb you, this might…
Note, if your iPhone or whatever wont let you view this, go to YouTube.