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Friday, November 16, 2007

Banish Bird Bonks?

Bounce on over to David Sibley's blog to read about a potentially simple but effective way to reduce bird strikes on windows using fluorescent yellow highlighter pens. Basically, you can make a nearly invisible (to us) grid on the inside of your window with the highlighter (marking the outside works, too, but the highlighter will wash off when it rains.) The idea is that birds, with their visual acuity extending into near-UV wavelengths, can see the grid pattern and will veer off instead of colliding.

He & his kids have quantified some promising data from their experiments and have identified some other ideas to test- sounds like a great science fair project! Anyway, if this pans out it would be great to spread the word- windows kill on the order of nearly a billion birds in North America each year!

Great idea, David (& David's kids)! So if you have a bonk-prone window and haven't installed or don't want to install a Bird Screen , give the Sibley bird-repelling method a try & let David know how it works.


1 comment:

Anonymous said...

This sounds like a great idea. Although in some cases if the trees are thick around your house or other irregularities, you may need some extra fire power like Irri-tape, or another visual scare device.

Let's try and keep the birds safe and our windows unbonked.

Jess D'Amico
Media Correspondent
www.bird-x.com