UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Each year, hundreds of millions of birds in the United States are killed when they collide with windows. Visitors to the Arboretum at Penn State can learn about simple ways to help prevent collisions at a demonstration on April 18.
Joe Gyekis, Penn State associate professor of biobehavioral health, U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service biologist Richard Novak, and members of the “Bird Safe Penn State” student group will install vinyl dot stickers on the doors of the Glass House in the Arboretum’s children’s garden and discuss how people can make their own windows safer for birds.
The Bird-Safe Glass Demonstration will be held in the Childhood’s Gate Children’s Garden from 12:45 to 3 p.m. on Thursday, April 18, with a rain date on April 25.
Research shows that spotted or striped patterns applied to the outside of window glass can reduce bird-window collision rates by 90 percent or more, Gyekis said.
“Once you realize it’s a preventable issue, the attitude changes to, ‘We should do something about it,’” Gyekis said.
The dots are being donated to the Arboretum by the Pennsylvania field office of the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, which works to spread awareness about the dangers posed to birds by glass windows and light pollution, especially during the spring and fall migration seasons.
Novak pointed to studies that estimate 600-900 million birds are killed each year by window strikes, which occur when birds mistake clear glass for an open space they can fly through. While bird-proofing the windows of individual homes or buildings might seem like a small action, “if everybody does that, it scales up,” Novak said.
“These birds live and travel across continents, so community-level actions are going to scale up to global impacts,” he said.
Gyekis credited the student group with helping get the issue of window strikes on Penn State’s radar. With funding from Penn State Sustainability, the new Susan Welch Liberal Arts Building on campus is being built with a section of bird-friendly glass and an experimental design feature intended to help prevent window strikes.
“We’ve gone from an era where almost nobody realized this was an issue to one where Penn State is actually investing in it and starting to take it seriously and make changes,” Gyekis said.
The group is currently raising money to treat the glass bridge connecting Penn State’s life sciences and chemistry buildings, site of the highest number of bird collisions on campus.
“Window collisions are among the top contributors to bird mortality, but these collisions are incredibly preventable with effective measures like bird-safe glass,” said student Kathryn Lathrop, a senior studying global and international studies and sustainability leadership. “This installation is super exciting because we are not only positively impacting campus sustainability and helping to prevent window collisions, but also opening the demonstration to community members interested in learning more.”
More information on making windows safer for birds can be found on the U.S. Fish & Wildlife website.