Landscape and Architectural Influences on Avian Window Collisions
Window collisions due to both glass reflectivity and lights at night are the second leading cause of bird death in the United States. Many efforts have begun across the country to more accurately assess the impact and provide rehabilitation for window strike victims that survive. Many of the fine scale factors leading to window collisions have not been fully determined. Using data collected by myself and fellow members of the Lights Out Buckeyes team (OSU’s avian window strike monitoring team), these smaller scale factors were further explored. While studies and articles have been published on the impacts of artificial light and glass reflectivity in cities as a major distraction to birds migrating at night, the Lights Out Buckeyes team seeks to better understand specific factors causing birds to collide with a given building. These factors include the amount of tree cover, percentage and area of glass on buildings, as well as location on campus compared to landscape features. The Lights Out Buckeyes team monitors campus four times a week, covering the entirety of campus twice per week. Over the course of four semesters of recording, 445 window strikes have been documented on campus by the team, 339 of which have been fatal. Most of the collisions found are migratory species while traveling between wintering and breeding grounds. Using GIS software to estimate tree cover within a fixed radius of the buildings of interest as well as visually estimating percentage of glass allow for potential relationships to be seen between architecture and landscape with bird collisions. While tree cover showed to not be as large of an indicator for window collisions, the percentage of glass showed a positive correlation, indicating that actions should be taken towards treatment of large glass dominated buildings and that this could be considered in future building designs on campus. Determining the architectural and landscape factors influencing collisions could ultimately help lead OSU towards becoming a more bird-friendly campus.
Tyler,
This is really interesting in that I didn’t know that window collision are a major cause of bird death. I think the work you are doing right now is great! Looking forward to future studies!
Thank you for the feedback! Many people aren’t aware of just how big of a problem this can be. Right now, outreach and education is the big thing in taking steps towards treating this! The Lights Out Buckeyes team has thankfully begun to make progress with some of the buildings on campus to treating the glass!