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Bouncing Birdies

By Matt Heyden

It goes like this. You hear that awful thud, and you know what has happened. You go out to look for the body. Yep, another dead bird. It’s no big deal, right? Well, actually it is. Every time we kill a bird by failing to protect them from our windows, we are stopping what could have been a long reproductive line.

Twenty five years ago, Lora and I bought an abandoned hunting camp on a few acres. The place was a shack with no running water, and couldn’t be lived in. While in the remodeling stage, we had five sliding glass doors installed. The property was so beautiful, that I wanted glass EVERYWHERE. Well, that’s when the problems began. As soon as we started feeding, we started collecting the dead bodies. We tried everything you could think of from wind chimes to stick-on silhouettes of birds taped on the glass. We even tried not washing the windows and putting patio furniture immediately in front of the glass.

As the property evolved, it started looking like some kind of flea market. Every window had strips of brightly covered nylon blowing in the wind or had been covered with construction grade plastic sheeting. I could see our guests asking themselves: "Why do they live this way?"

A few summers ago a juvenile rose breasted grossbeak flew into one of the glass windows. Somehow it had found an unprotected section and was able to fly around the patio umbrella to get to the window. The adults had learned to stay away from the windows, but the juveniles were the new victims. That was the last straw. We decided that we would have to pad every window, kind of like child proofing a house.

The solution was to cover EVERY window with simple screening. In our case, we can just staple it over the normal windows, or hang it over the sliding glass doors that open. This solution was both easy to do and inexpensive. Additionally it actually makes the house look better, and cuts down on the uv getting into the house. And finally, no more bird kills. It’s much better to have babies bouncing off of windows uninjured, than to have corpses!

Now, when we’re traveling, we frequently visit National Wildlife Refuges that have visitor centers. Many, many of these have huge glass windows, and feed the birds. We ask if they have a problem with bird kills, and frequently, employees will respond that they do, and that they have tried EVERYTHING. When I explain our idea, it hits them like a ton of bricks. So, there is no more excuse for birds being killed by glass. Cover it with screen.