https://reasonstobecheerful.world/stop-glass-windows-from-killing-birds/
"When I entered my friend’s newly built guest house near San Diego, I admired
the broad glass front that opened up to a panoramic view over the valley. By
the time I left an hour later, an egg-yolk-yellow warbler was writhing in front
of the glass entry door. We took the barely breathing beauty to a bird rehabber
who told us it would not survive.
According to an often-quoted estimate, building collisions kill a billion birds
in the U.S. every year, plus 40 million in Canada. But the true figure is
likely three to five times higher. The latest research indicates that many more
birds fly into windows, manage to dart away and die later from concussions or
internal injuries. These have not been counted.
Daniel Klem, the Sarkis Acopian Professor of Ornithology and Conservation
Biology at Muhlenberg College in Allentown, Pennsylvania, was the first to
comprehensively study and sound the alarm about the “really senseless killing
of these birds” in the 1990s. He found that collisions with glass kill up to
5.19 billion birds in the United States each year, with potentially billions
more worldwide. “That means 3.5 million die from striking windows every day of
the year,” he explains. “And this killer is indiscriminate — taking the strong
as well as the weak, creating environmental devastation. Window-killed victims
are innocent and helpless casualties because they are not able to see them as
barriers to be avoided; moreover, they have no voice or means to protect
themselves from this invisible killer.” Klem wrote the book
Solid Air,
Invisible Killer: Saving Billions of Birds from Windows to raise awareness
because, as he puts it, “They must rely on us humans to act on their behalf to
save them.”"
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
