Date: 1/11/25 3:02 pm From: Barry Haas <bhaas...> Subject: Bird Friendly Window Films
Dear ARBIRDers,
In the most recent issue of “Arkansas Birds”, newsletter of the Arkansas Audubon Society, AAS President Lynn Foster mentioned that she was having bird friendly window film installed on her residential windows (pages 8-10):
This afternoon I came across an article in the Chicago Sun-Times paper where McCormick Place in Chicago had bird-safe film installed last summer and it has greatly reduced the number of window collisions- they are down over 95%. Other Chicago buildings are interested in doing the same. McCormick Place is an enormous convention center in Chicago with 120,000 square feet of glass.
Here’s a link to the article for those of you who have access to Apple News and are interested in making your residential or commercial windows bird friendly: https://apple.news/AjAI6HngFQY-Vpzi4ZltrxQ
The article is behind a pay wall unless you have access to Apple News (iPhone, iPad, Apple Mac, etc.) or subscribe to the Chicago Sun-Times. The article mentions Feather Friendly, a company that makes and installs bird-safe window film. The decision to install the film was sadly due to the following: “ … one night during the fall migration in 2023 was especially deadly: about 1,000 birds flew <https://apple.news/AfjyRMCb7ReiGQEg5fjSJ0w> into the lakefront building and died”. McCormick took immediate steps like closing drapes overnight and turning off unnecessary outside lights. The bird-safe film was a longer term solution with the intent to reduce bird strikes.
From the deep woods just west of Little Rock (where we got 10-12” of snow).
Barry Haas
P.S. Our small pond is frozen and snowed over. We don’t expect to see wood ducks at until there is open water again. It has been six days since our last sighting which had been regular throughout October-December. A rare treat for us was a male green-winged teal that appeared morning and evening on December 30, hanging out with three wood ducks. That was a first ever sighting of the species in 26 years of living here.
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