Bird’s Eye View?

Ever been sitting somewhere in your home during the fairer weather months, quiet enough to hear a thumping sound at the nearby window or glass slider? I have, ignoring it typically ‘til I’m in the yard a day later where I see a dead bird near one of our sliders. This is sometimes called a bird strike.

Well, there’s a kind of glass called “fritted” (or, etched) that’s made for birds to see and steer away from. A frit is a length of pencil-thin ceramic embedded in or onto glass. What birds see is what looks to us like spider webs, if we look really closely (glasses on?). It’s really almost invisible to us from the inside. This kind of glass is available both for commercial and residential application ‘though much less commonly seen in single-family residential. Costs somewhat more, but helps save nature from certain human endeavors. And, an additional benefit of some import is that fritted glazing reduces glare from the windows.

The LEED rating system encourages a look at fritted glass, among nature-friendly improvements with additional benefits, for new construction and major rehab projects. That said, there isn’t a LEED credit for employing fritted glass.

However, with emphasis on larger windows to afford more natural light deep into a building’s interior, fritted glass is employed with some frequency these days in commercial mid- or high-rise buildings to help offset U.S. estimates of millions of bird deaths annually due to collisions with glass. Bird-friendly glass building facades have fritted glass throughout the first 4 stories, anyway.

For instance, Audubon Pennsylvania recently reported results of a 3-year survey on the Center Philadelphia Temple University campus where on average more than 1,000 birds collided with its mid- or high-rise buildings annually. The majority of these were migratory birds rather than native sparrows, skylarks and pigeons.

About the adjacent picture, sophomore Molly Denisevicz won Temple’s contest in late 2012 to design an attractive yet effective film to prevent bird-window collisions. The contest entries are stuck with small clear suction cup hangars to the windows of Paley Library. (credit: Emma Lee/for NewsWorks)

OBTW, there’s another possible, very inexpensive solution of some utility for the new building. St. Margaret’s dayschoolers might make items to hang on the inside of the windows in face of a usual flight path to a particular nesting tree nearby or migratory flight pattern. Those suspended objects might include Mylar balloons, aluminum pie pans, tin foil crafted into shapes according to the kids’ imaginations, Christmas decorations and old CDs. If reflective shiny, it’s a likely deterrence.

In the home with youngsters, determine the prevalent flight path and have your kids hang deterrents in those windows. Maybe not permanently, but as something to learn about that offers a definite “proud-of-it” outcome. If permanently, there are commercially available exterior films like this one by Feather Friendly® of Canada.