Windows are estimated to kill hundreds of millions of songbirds every year, and our campus is no exception. As this is a cross-disciplinary challenge involving avian behavior, building design, and campus sustainability, Biology professor Mike Butler and I have worked with students to better understand the extent of this problem and to develop some effective ways to reduce fatalities here. Our dataset demonstrates that window strikes are clustered in spring and fall at some of the newer campus buildings that have extensive reflective glass (e.g. Hugel, Skillman, Kirby sports center). A variety of species are affected as illustrated in the photos later on this page — surprisingly, hummingbirds are the most frequently killed species.
We have joined our effort 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
- Summary Press Release
Fortunately, this is a problem with some relatively inexpensive solutions. Recently, 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. So far the results are very promising, collisions have been reduced to near zero at Hugel. In our view this effort needs to be expanded to more high-risk windows on campus.
The 100th bird carcass in our campus window-killed collection.
Links:
EREN collaborative Bird-window Collisions Project
Dan Klem’s Birds and Windows site at Muhlenberg College
American Bird Conservancy’s Glass Collisions site
LEED pilot credit for bird collision deterrence
A sampling of pics from campus:
Hugel sidewalk – early Sept 13
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.
Robin at the entrance to Acopian Engineering Center – Apr 13
Robin at entrance to Hugel – Nov 12
Hummingbird outside Skillman
And another at Hugel
mourning dove – Hugel
Tanager at Hugel
Catbird
A warbler at Skillman
a warbler at Hugel
another warbler at Skillman
a stunned warbler that was lucky to have been spotted by Prof Butler – this one survived
Blackburninan warbler at Hugel – May 2016
Canada Warbler at Hugel, Aug 2016
Nuthatch at Skillman
Cedar waxwing at Hugel
Kingfisher at the arts complex over Bushkill Creek
Sparrow (not the ordinary variety) at Hugel
Kinglet at Skillman
Junco (snowbird) outside AEC