Killer House

We've had two bird kills in the past couple of weeks. A year ago I reported two window-bird collision incidents -- we've had many since. From my office I may hear a collision a day. I don't check many of them out. Probably a good many of them have been fatal, but scavengers harvest the bodies.

Today a little hummingbird crashed right into the window in front of my desk. He fell to the porch. When I approached him he managed to fly a bit but ran out of gas and perched uncertainly on a cord that holds one of our trees upright. He teetered there a while. I pulled the guts out of a Bic pen and used the red tube as a dropper, and gave him a few sips of sugar water from the feeder. They have tiny needles for tongues and he lapped at it a little. I left him a lone for periods up to ten minutes, hoping he could gather his energy and fly; but after an hour perching on his rope he fell to the ground, I put him in a box on a soft cloth but it only took him a few more minutes to give up the ghost. Waaah!

A week or so ago a dove crashed heavily into the same window. K & I ran out and found him stunned, but looking like he was recovering -- cocking his head and looking at us. We left him to recover on the porch where he'd falllen -- but ten minutes later he was limp.

I clearly see what is fooling them. You can see the bright clouds on the horizon dozens of miles of way, reflected in our windows. The birds see nothing but air for 30 miles and careen full speed into the windows.

We need to find a way to make our windows non-reflective, and ideally our view out the windows would remain the same. The problem is widespread, especially for office buildings. This article surveys the problem and suggests

As one solution, Mesure and Hanlon are looking at an opaque window film designed by 3M that allows people to look out of but not into a window. Currently, it's not available to the public and only being used to place advertisements over bus and taxi windows. Mesure became convinced it could save birds' lives after he experimented with it on his own problem window at home. Not a single bird has hit it in the five years since. "The problem may be that people won't be able to get around how different it looks," says Mesure.

Not sure how we need to go so far as to make our windows opaque. Seems to me, all we need to do is inhibit the reflection of the far horizon. I just need to find some thin film technology appropriate for household use.