Bird brains stuck to my windows.
Wife washed the windows a couple of days ago and since then we’ve had six birds fly into them. Thats just increased traffic. Its a common occurence around here. We live deep in the woods and we have a lot of glass
Anyone have a solution?
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Replies
Mav. Here the parks system hangs a couple colored streamers (3/4" wide) outside in front of the glass and it does help I guess by maybe breaking up the reflection or introducing something that doesn't look like the woods. This is done on all the Window on Wildlife glassed in viewing areas. Survey tape works pretty good.
Remodeling Contractor just outside the Glass City.
Quittin' Time
plywood??
:)
http://frogstar.com/wav/displaywav.asp?fil=mp-fart.wav
plan "B" the birds..
Get some black craft type paper and make a cutout of a predatory bird. Stick that to the window.
They wont go near it. Having this on the window is probably not your first choice, but that over mutiple birds hits.........
Or you could try a predator type decoy if available and position that outside someplace visible to the birds. They dont have to avoid your place entirely, just change flight path a teeny bit.
Everything, 100% of it, depends on how you look at it.
DW
Cut-out, hell. Make a deep window seat over a radiator (or maybe a radiant tile top) and put a few cats there. Real ones, not cutouts.
Must be we need more cats then. Our guy sits on the (deep) sill, waits for the thump, and figures it's opportunity knocking. Pretty sure they don't see him there.
Oddly, we don't have more than 1 every few months that hits hard enough to not fly off. This is with 300' of glass, large panes. We do have big close trees though. Within 15', so maybe that interrupts the flight pattern, or the reflections.PAHS Designer/Builder- Bury it!
Had this happen just last week at my office. It was a homing pigeon. Contacted the owner (via the foot band) and it turns out the bird was in a 400 mile race. Shame.
Spoke to a friend w/ a house that has 8 glass sliding doors, and his take was that this usually happens when the birds can see through the building and then try to fly through. If you close the shades, blinds etc on one side, and they are unable to see through, they stop "beating their head against the wall".
He has also used the silhouette of a predator (as mentioned before), but blocking the through vision seems to work best. Also having a light on inside (during the day) creates reflections on the "exit" glass, and seems to cut down on the attempted "fly throughs".
We also live in the woods, have at least one large window and feed birds. In the past we've had any number of bird hits on our windows, even ones that they can't see through to the other side. Last December, when the Christmas decorations came on sale, we bought a couple of packs of snow flake holograph stick ons. I put them up and since we've had maybe one bird hit the window. We previously had tried spider web sitck ups (I think they used them for a target) holograph tape from top to bottom (they flew around them) and floresent flagging tape (not much better either). In Canada the snow flakes in Summer don't look as funny as they might in Florda but who cares when they are the only thing that actually has shown a drastic reduction in bird kills. We have friends who have the cut out of a hawk on their patio doors which worked for a while but now seems to be taken by the birds as just so much window dressing.
Best of luck,
RPH+
put the dirt back on the windows.
mike
Ive tried to hunt grouse but them suckers r quick..but the tastiest one was the one that hit one of my big patio windows.Sounded like ozzie throwing a chunk of firewood at the house.
When you see a bird headed for your window....moon it.
Re: "When you see a bird headed for your window....moon it."Having wild birds hit the windows and be injured or die is a tragedy. Mooning them is just plain cruel.
I will stop doing it, my neibors thank you.
I went to Spain about a year ago - I know, what could Spain possibly have to do with this bird issue? Apparently their solution for the issue was to hang cd's from threads on the exterior of their homes. Something about the combination of the movement of the cd swinging in the wind and the rainbow reflection as the sun shines on it. Hope it helps.
I just found an article in the 2001 FHB Houses issue that deals with this issue. Irene Fedun (author) recommends making the glass look opaque by adding a film and suggests Scotchcal by 3M - the same stuff used for advertising on buses. Guess you could make some money with this idea too!
There is a spiderweb decal with a little squiggle in it that is supposedly a signal spiders weave into their webs to warn off birds. I think it is called a stigmata or something similar. Sorry I can't remember where I saw it. Check with the Audobon Society, maybe?
Reminds me of a guy living near the ocean who was tired of having seagulls drop shellfish onto his driveway to break the shells open so they could chow down and leave him to 'clean up the dishes'. His solution? He painted the driveway the same colour as the ocean. The gulls stopped clam-bombing his driveway instantly.
Maybe you should give your kid a set of Tempra paints and let him do some art naïf on the glass windows in question?
Dinosaur
A day may come when the courage of men fails,when we forsake our friends and break all bonds of fellowship...
But it is not this day.
I appreciate everyones input here. I think I'll start with the predator bird silhouette. We like having unobstructed views but I think we'll make a sacrifice for the birds.
In my previous house the birds flight path was over my driveway. We has a crab apple tree in the yard and you could tell what stage the tree was in by the color of the turds on my cars. I bought a big plastic owl and put it on top of the basketball pole at the end of the driveway. The birds found another route.
We had a Downey Woodpecker and a Bluebird killed last week, so I ordered some decals. The falcon decal was sold for quite a few years, but apparently wasn't effective. I'm trying the ones that reflect ultraviolet light from WindowAlert
http://store.windowalert.com/index.html
kestrel