As the number of birds migrating north every year appears to have increased, along with a proliferation of new office buildings in cities in the path of flyways, the number of birds crashing into buildings and dying also has increased.

 

This trend has boosted interest in anti-bird strike window film. Commercial Window Shield was one of the country’s early installers of this film when they installed it on a glass walkway connecting the Washington Convention Center to a building next door. The walkway was directly in a bird flythrough zone and the clear glass gave birds the impression it was safe to fly through. Hundreds crashed into the glass and died. The installation of the anti-bird strike film ended the problem.

 

The most visible boost to bird safety window film as a deterrent to bird deaths occurred in December, 2019, when New York City Council passed legislation requiring bird friendly glass in buildings throughout the city.

 

The law passed after an intense bird safety campaign by local and national conservation groups and with the support of a number of influential building architects.

 

It had been determined that the city is in a major northeast bird migration route known as the Atlantic Flyway. As a result of that and the huge number of high-rise buildings in the city with glass facades, between 90,000 and 230,000 birds die annually from flying into the buildings.

 

Previously, various forms of bird-safe building standards or legislation has been adopted in the state of Minnesota; several California cities, including San Francisco and Oakland; and Toronto. San Francisco was the first city to pass bird safety legislation in 2011, although it was not a binding law. Several members of

Congress have introduced legislation seeking bird-safe requirements in new federal buildings.

 

The issue with birds and office building glass involves location, light conditions, and time of day. Building glass and windows can appear highly reflective or completely transparent. By appearing similar to open sky, trees, and vegetation, it causes birds to mistake the space as a safe place to fly.

 

Most birds’ first encounters with glass are fatal as they collide with it a

t full flight speed. The uniqueness of bird vision is a contributing factor to this problem. While humans have eyes in the front of their heads and good depth perception, most birds’ eyes are at the sides of their heads. Thus, they have little depth perception beyond the range of their bills but extensive fields of view to the side and behind. They judge their flight speed by the passing of objects to their sides, so their focus in flight is not necessarily ahead.

 

So rather than designing buildings using less glass, which will not be happening, birds can be protected by “marking” the glass in some way so they perceive the windows as barriers and avoid them. One easy and cost-effective way to do this is to install anti-bird strike window film on all glass that is located in bird fly zones. These films usually have horizontal or vertical patterns that make the glass visible to birds. This is the type of bird safety film Commercial Window Shield installed at the Washington Convention Center.

 

In New York, the law requires 90 percent of the building envelope for the first 75 feet of a new building – or any building undergoing major alterations – to be constructed of bird-friendly materials meeting a specified design standard intended to decrease bird strikes.

 

The law also requires the installation of the bird-friendly materials where an exterior wall envelope is adjacent to a green roof system and on certain installations that create hazards for birds, such as glass awnings, handrails, windbreak panels, acoustic barriers, and parallel glass panels.

 

The law relates to new construction but there is an important clause requiring architects and builders to include bird protection during any building renovation project.

 

The American Bird Conservancy, which has a glass collisions program, was a major player in advising New York’s city council on the legislation. The group also has worked closely with architecture firms around the country to get them on board with the bird safety effort in their building designs.

 

The Jacob Javits Convention Center in New York is a significant success story in the quest to improve building glass safety for birds. Once considered the deadliest building in New York for birds because of the huge amounts of reflective glass in the building’s design, a building renovation project completed in 2014 that included fritted, translucent glass panels reduced bird deaths by 90 percent.

 

More recently, in Chicago in spring, 2022, conservationists were busier than usual in their hunt for dead and injured birds as millions of birds flew across Chicagoland in what experts said was one of the biggest migration movements of the season. More than 8,700,000 birds crossed Cook County May 9 to May 10, according to the migration dashboard that allows residents to see how many birds are migrating in the area in real time.

 

Beginning in mid-March, billions of birds fly north to mate, nest and then head back south to warmer climates in mid-August, to do it all again the following year. With that migration comes lethal dangers, including starvation, predators—and high-speed crashes into building windows.

While Chicago has yet to pass legislation protecting birds with measures such as anti-bird strike installation, like other cities, it’s possible there will be action in the near future as bird activists become more vocal. It’s likely that other large cities with large buildings in bird fly zones will follow suite in the future as anti-bird strike film becomes one of the go-to methods of solving this massive problem.