Window Strikes

As I've been spending more and more time outside looking for birds, I've found more and more birds that are hitting windows. Over the last couple of weeks, while bird watching I've had the unfortunate opportunity to get closer to a few birds than I would normally. One morning while checking out a glass walkway, I looked over in a small corner and found a Ruby-crowned Kinglet. Initially, I thought the little bird was dead but then noticed it was just dazed. I picked it up and after about 15 minutes it seemed to have recovered enough and flew up into a tree. Here is a picture of the bird (probably young) with my coworker holding it.


The following week I stopped in the same spot and looked over to see a Yellow-crowned Kinglet sitting on the ground looking a little lost. I left it alone for a few minutes while I checked the rest of the windows for casualties. When I approached this bird, it flew up into a small ornamental tree and immediately started yelling at me! No picture this time.

Then this past week, I headed out to do a little bird walking in a courtyard at my building and the first bird I saw was a Hermit Thrush who flew up into a tree. After a couple of minutes I took another step toward the bird (toward the door to go back inside. The bird, although perched above the roof line, quickly took a looping drop away and right into a window, about 15 feet from its perch. This time I took the bird and placed it is a box for about an hour. I took this young bird outside and opened the box and the bird quickly flew up to a nearby tree. The bird sat for a few minutes and when I headed out to check about 20 minutes later, it was gone. Here is a shot while still out of it.


Unfortunately we actually make rounds through this same courtyard to check for kills. There are see-thru hallways on both sides of the courtyard and the number of marks left behind by birds hitting the windows is mind boggling. On one side of one hall there are at least 15 residual marks from Mourning Doves hitting the windows. Last week I took did the first walkthrough after the weekend and here were the casualties from one week.



We are currently looking for options on how to reduce the number of window strikes in the courtyard. We've been discussing films to cover the windows, shiny objects to scare birds away, and possibly netting to protect birds that still fly toward the glass. I have stopped going by the building with the walkway where the Kinglets were found. They both seemed to have been startled by my being there and that caused them flying into the windows. Hopefully, I won't have too many more pictures like these to post.