BirdTape and why it should be on your windows.

The American Bird Conservancy has produced a fantastic new product: BirdTape.

Ultimately, windows kill more birds in the US than all other forms of human-related bird deaths (cats, cars, wind turbines, etc), combined. Indeed, it is speculated that many cat kills were stunned from hitting windows first. Many stunned birds who are lucky enough to escape cats still fly away and many die later of internal injuries.

Here's their instructional video:



Be sure to check out the video at the bottom of their collisions page!!

Considering that the Germans have been working on this for years because their sound barriers along highways tend to be glass, it has taken quite a while for the idea to spread. Here are a few pictures from my 2008 trip, starting with a shelter at a train station that was built before the idea caught on - but still has falcon silhouette stickers!



Apologies for the quality of these, they're both taken from inside moving trains. This second design would have been more bird friendly if the stripes were vertical instead of horizontal, but the aesthetic appeal would probably have been decreased. For all practical purposes, though, it will do its job far better than the few stickers on the shelter above!



For a reminder: most buildings have this problem to one degree or another. Here's a kindergarten/elementary school that uses bird stickers and big, bright paper cutouts to prevent bird/people window strikes.



And for grown-ups, here's the airport in Koln: the main building is huge glass panels without any visible sign of stickers or fritting or bird-friendly modifications. Yet the air vents near the parking lot are surrounded by glass panels as well, and they have designs that are about as effective as bird stickers (read: better than nothing, but not by much).



So if you have issues with your windows, don't waste your effort on band-aid fixes like one or two stickers per window - you will have bird prints between the stickers:



Related links:
Problems with Windows
10 Things You Can Do To Reduce Bird vs. Window Collisions
A window into the perils of migration
Seetrail links:
Tis the season; a bird is trying to get into my house
When birds hit windows

Another option: shade structures. A bit more expensive than tape.



Conclusion? My name is Heidi, and I am a window tourist.



(x-posted at Big Bend Birds & Nature)

just links

For folks who are seeking wildlife rehab, here's a directory link that also has some useful tips.

For an eloquent write-up on the scientific value of dead birds, "So You Found a Dead Bird" says things a bit better than I generally do. I would say that in some cases, there is such a thing as too common (but probably not for under-studied counties), and there is such a thing as "too far gone" for roadkill/decay/etc - but that also depends on the bird. Snow Bunting roadkill in TX? Only a wing or leg still 3D? Bring it in!

The "why" of window monitoring

Birds hit windows. It's pretty much impossible to overstate the  extent of the issue. Pretty much everyone knows that it happens but very few people look beyond face value of the smudge on glass.

This is more eloquent than anything I've seen yet, so please take a look at
Tim O'Connell's piece: A window into the perils of migration. He beautifully outlines the "how" and "why" of dead birds as educational tools, as well as one example of the mind boggling architecture that causes such high mortality rates. Flat-sided buildings are bad enough, but a horseshoe with a 'corridor effect' cluster at one end? Yikes!

On a coincidental note, I'm about half way into a paper on the complexities of North American window collisions - they've been my constant companion since 2003 and I need to get my thoughts out of my head and into writing. Unfortunately it's a rather dry, sciency sort of writing, but I think the discussion will be helpful. It's just terribly difficult to keep citations sorted out since there are about 20 papers that cite each other ad infinitum and the resulting citation loop is frustrating. One paper that I criticize lists my paper in its citations, too, for that matter!

Anyway, here are some lovelies - Tennessee Warblers - from Principia, circa 2004-2005 (a tiny fraction of the actual species diversity and even fewer of the overall body count.)



External link: dead bird album


This is also cross-posted over at Big Bend Birds & Nature.

The Yard List that keeps going...

I know I posted about yard lists a while back, but the last few weeks have been quite something! The Jan/Feb lull was a time of complacency (and frozen pipes) but spring seems to have hit right along with the 90+ degree days. Thankfully it's been cooling off nicely in the evenings, but for those of y'all not following our other blog, you may not have realized that most of the three counties out here have pretty much been, at least in part, on fire since early March. The fire just to our north, Iron Mountain, is about 8 miles out and has been going for around a week. Somewhere in the vicinity of 50,000 acres have burned and it's still only about 80% contained. On the bright side, the Rock House Fire is FINALLY out (after a bit over a month!) as of a few days ago. Oof!

Right, back to the bird list, starting where we left off:

Zone-tailed Hawk 4/5/11
Scott's Oriole 4/10/11
Harris's Hawk 4/10/11
Broad-winged Hawk 4/16/11
Yellow-headed Blackbird 4/20/11
Pine Siskin 4/23/11
Swainson's Thrush 4/23/11
Ruby-throated Hummingbird 4/26/11
Green-tailed Towhee 4/26/11
Painted Bunting 5/9/11
Gray Flycatcher 5/10/11
Willow Flycatcher 5/11/11
Black-throated Sparrow 5/11/11
Orchard Oriole 5/11/11
Western Wood-Pewee 5/12/11
MacGillivray's Warbler 5/13/11
Vermilion Flycatcher 5/15/11
Common Yellowthroat 5/15/11
Yellow Warbler 5/15/11
American Redstart 5/15/11

***

I should also throw in this gem of trivia: 95 bird species are on my tentative 'expanded' freezer list (to include wildlife work and rehab, but not captive zoo work nor pets). Most seem to be roadkill, but windows overlap a good bit (I knew I had 47 or 48 spp from Illinois, and now there are a few more window critters to add...)

Really, though, it's either impressive or depressing that roughly 20% of the bird species I've ever seen in the US have at one time or another been in a freezer that I've been associated with. Can't believe I didn't make/start the list sooner, it seems like something I'd do. At this rate, I'll have filled up a few chest freezers over the course of my rather short lifetime; every one of them 'salvaged' (not actively 'collected' with gun or trap).

To avoid ending on such a strange note, here's a Painted Bunting! She's alive, stunned, but otherwise uninjured. Found her in the middle of the road to Fort Stockton on my way to Houston earlier in the month. Houston? I guess that trip needs a post one of these days, too!

Window kill: Lark Bunting

Of the creatures inhabiting our freezer, Lark Bunting (Calamospiza melanocorys) was one I didn't anticipate would have been a window kill. Most Lark Buntings are seen in distant flocks, uttering a feeble "what? wheep?" sort of call; this female is far closer than any I'd ever have expected to see. Bird-in-hand is an interesting departure from in-field observation.

A dear neighbor found it at a residence on the west side of town... she brought it to me and we discovered a few things. Lark Buntings have two different shades of down feathers. Gray under the back, black under the belly. The outermost four primaries are nearly black, the rest are dark brown.

Note: state and/or federal permits are required to pick up birds.
Our permits are through Texas A&M; the collection date for this bunting was 1 April, 2011 from NW Marathon, Brewster Co. Texas.

Child's play

My thoughts about wind farms can be found in other blog posts.


















This set of [wind] farm-related toys was found at our local Alco store in Alpine; it makes industrial scale wind turbines seems benign. One behemoth wind turbine (perhaps 1 MW, no more than 1.5 MW from the looks of it) powers a farm and it's peachy. I mean, there's a tractor and a greenhouse and some plants, too! But building one wind turbine by itself isn't practical, efficient, or realistic. So the smallest cluster tends to be ~6 and those are generally within easy driving distance of another cluster... otherwise you've got technicians who would have to drive all day to get between isolated turbines. But I digress.

















Really, the biggest problem I see is that this set is incomplete. The turbine foundation is forgivable - nobody really cares about a few trucks of concrete underground - but the power lines? How about the substation? There needs to be at least one replacement blade. Clearly dead birds and bats are left to the imagination (along with the techs and out-of-state operators, not to mention international corporations who sponsored it unless it's actually backed by a multi-millionaire farmer). Child's play.

Again, I digress. But that box gave me chills. "Country Life" indeed - because nobody wants a wind farm in their suburban backyard. Oof.

Cold without redemption

"Actually not at all sad, if you think about it! It's the other 987,208,947 carcasses you have collected that were sad." - Froggi

Ok, our winter has been remarkably mild, except for every other week or so when we get a cold front that lasts anywhere from 4-20 hrs. The frigid blast last week left us without water from Monday night until Saturday afternoon - and we'd even left the faucets running. Thankfully we only found one pipe broken, it was the main well line at a spot above ground. That's what happens when three days are below freezing with gusty winds.

Enough of our inconveniences.

I've posted before about birds hitting windows, cars hitting birds, wind turbine blades hitting birds, and a myriad of other bird death issues. However, I think this will be my first post to actually document a bird that died of natural causes. It is an Inca Dove. Adult, from what I can tell. Not sure of sex.

















I wish I'd gotten a photo of it where I found it. But the temps were getting warmer and I wanted it to be preserved ASAP. It was in the yard, under the tall evergreen thing that our clothes line passes - where nothing can be hung on the line for a few feet because Inca Doves roost there and their droppings are magnetically attracted to clean clothes.

To recount all of the dead birds I've found, photographed, 'salvaged' or otherwise witnessed, the list would be well over one hundred species long. Baby Tree Swallows thrown out of their nest by House Sparrows. Natural cause? Hardly. Certainly, I've seen dead fledgelings and nestlings and those are definitely natural causes. Dead baby bird, still in the nest, tangled in yarn/string/twine/fishing line that cut off its circulation? Also not a natural cause.

Gulls, terns, pelicans. Perhaps some were natural. Most were beyond the point of determining cause - they could have ingested hooks or plastic. Indeed, even the one domestic bird that I watched die of West Nile... it was quick. Yet this Inca Dove is part of a species close to my heart, and one of our eight regulars in the yard. Life is fragile, but resilient. Yet there's such a fine line life walks.