Recently in wildlife Category

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.

A few links to outdoor lighting. The main principle is simple, don't use lighting when it's not necessary, let the light go only where it is needed, generally down and certainly out or your neighbors eyes. It's a little harder to do in practice. For instance our workshop has a clerestory and there are no interior walls so turning on a single interior light illuminates all 75 feet of clerestory.

Idaho Wood
http://www.idahowood.com/darkskies.htm

Starry Nights
http://store.starrynightlights.com/index.html

On sale:
http://store.starrynightlights.com/gb-1000.html

ludicrously overlit
http://www.kwastronomy.com/Local_Bad_Lighting.htm

Overseas:
http://www.astro.cz/darksky/

There we were at work today, Gretchen and I, in downtown Austin in our spacious "atrium" (what used to be the lobby before it got made into the area for our desks). It has a 2-story ceiling and a 2-story bank of windows along one side of it, and Gretchen's desk abuts part of the glassed-in front area as well. Out of the blue she said, "What is up with the birds this year? They keep flying into the windows!"

So it appears that it is, at the least, a city-wide phenomenon. I told her about our birds at home, and Hugh's blog entry of the other day and Nell's response. Tres bizarre, as they say in France (about les oiseaux et les fenetres, undoubtedly).

Maybe their little brains are addled by the heat. Maybe it is a mass bird-suicide protest attempt along the lines of beached whales and dolphins. Maybe it's Hitchcock come to life and they're aiming at our heads, only those darn clear flat things keep getting in the way and foiling their dastardly plot.

Yesterday afternoon, I was surprised sitting in my office by a bird slamming into the window. This happens from time to time. But yesterday, this sparrow was hurtling full speed, and when he hit the window, he stunned himself and slid down to the porch. I ran out and the little guy lay motionless except for breathing about a thousand times a minute. This was a dangerous situation as our cats like to hang out in just that spot. I stood guard for several minutes, hoping the little guy would come around, but he just lay there. I nearly gave up on him, and went inside to retrieve a piece of cardboard to move him with; when I returned, he still lay there but as I approached, he revived and flew away. Me cheering!

About an hour later, another bird slammed into the window again! Recovered nicely, and flew off.

I have two hypotheses.

First, something about the window glare fools the birds. The windows are under the porch roof, not on the perimiter of the house, and are face North. So it's unclear to me what a bird could mistake them for.

My second theory occurred to me only during a bike ride later that evening. The wind was blowing strongly out of the South. Could it be that a bird has to work really hard flying south against the wind, and that when it drops down below the roofline in the lee of the house, it suddenly finds itself moving twice as fast as it expects?