A clear problem

Things have been downright soupy here in central Wisconsin and much of the northern half of the state. The Rib River isn’t in flood stage but it’s up over its banks and moving at a good clip. You can’t mow the extremely long grass without getting the lawn mower stuck in the mud.

I suppose it makes up for the dry winter and for the fact that we avoided the famous “heat dome” ( which sounds to me like a Mad Max movie) that so much of the rest of the nation has been dealing with.

Lots of water means lots of lush greenery, meaning that our birds and wildlife are, like the old-timey admonition to children, seen and not heard. Unfortunately all that verdant foliage is reflected in my windows, leading to problems with bird strikes. Window and structure collisions are a serious problem for birds in the modern era and are a major concern at a time when bird populations are generally shrinking.

The American Bird Conservancy reports that up to a billion birds per year are killed by collisions with buildings and structures. This is predictably most common during seasonal migration, but it happens at all times of the year.

Residential windows in a woodsy setting like mine are a problem because, to a bird, the reflection of trees looks just like a continuation of the forest. But the worst culprits tend to be large manmade structures like skyscrapers, office towers and cell towers. In these cases, it’s not so much the deceptive reflective nature of glass, but the lighting that creates havoc.

Like mariners of old, birds that migrate at night use the stars to navigate and find their way to their breeding and wintering grounds. Light sources like streetlights and cell towers interferes with their sense of direction and makes them not only veer off course but aim for dangerous and invisible barriers. Anyone who has driven through a wind farm at night can attest to how disorienting the enormous field of lights blinking in synchronous rows can be; imagine trying to fly through that.

Some species are more prone to collisions thanks to their habits and habitats. Some, like black-and-white warblers and hermit thrushes, have high levels of collision depredation thanks to their large populations. But some others, like ovenbirds and white-throated sparrows, have structure collisions as the greatest threat to their species’ survival.

I don’t think we have to choose between progress — or in the case of wind farms green energy — or thriving bird populations. Bill S.791, the Federal Bird Safe Buildings Act, has been stalled in Congress for about three years.

I don’t personally see this as a liberal or conservative issue, and since it only applies to public buildings it doesn’t exactly put a regulatory burden on private business. But every bit helps, and as for those private businesses we as consumers can vote with our dollars and use our voices to support the ones that use building features and technologies to reduce bird fatalities. And as I’ve mentioned before in this column, the state of Illinois has already passed a law requiring bird-safe construction techniques for its public buildings.

But in the meantime, is there anything I can do with my existing house to make it safer? Unfortunately most of the home remedies are not very useful. Window decals need to be placed on the outside (not feasible with upper windows) and so close together as to pretty much cover the window (the only value they added here was entertainment as the cats think the decals are real birds and lunge for them). Screens applied to the outside of windows and interior vertical blinds kept halfway open can help.

I’m considering one-way transparent film that appears opaque to birds, but I have to way that against the added heating costs I might incur with a house with a passive solar design like mine. I’m pretty sure that the birds, most of whom won’t be here in the winter anway, won’t be too bothered by that.