A Midwest bank was remodeling their in-supermarket branches with glass walls. It looked really spiffy and let in a lot more light. Then a few weeks later they had decals up on some of the glass panels and they were frosting others and I asked a teller why they changed.
It turns out that many people were slamming into the glass walls, usually when turning a corner quickly, (my guess: while staring at their phones!) and hurting themselves, so the bank decided it was better to get ahead of the inevitable lawsuit and make the clear glass more visible.
How we've managed to survive this long as a species is beyond me.
The African savanna is very coal- and coke-poor -- for most of our species' early history, our natural predators, like lions and cheetahs, were unable to produce sheet glass in large quantities. When humans started moving north into Eurasia, where coal deposits are more common, they were saved by the fact that the ursine glass industry was depressed by terrible protectionist laws up until the Bearton-Woofs Agreement in 1944.
> How we've managed to survive this long as a species is beyond me.
I'm genuinely unclear if this is a dig at the people who walked into transparent walls, or the people who thought that designing and implementing a transparent wall was a good idea.
Come to many parts of Europe and you might struggle to find a single full glass door or wall without a big red blob stuck on it, at around adult eye-level. If not that, a red dotted line.
It started way before smartphones. You’ll see it in villas and holiday homes presumably because the tourists get drunk and forget they closed the door to the terrace.
The glass walls that line motorways in Poland have black decals stuck on them that look like the outlines of birds of prey. Supposedly, birds can’t tell the decal from the shadow of an actual threatening species that they would prefer to avoid, and so they don’t fly anywhere near the walls.
I've never heard of this, why is it done? For aesthetic reasons? It seems like it would be marginally less practical than solid barriers which would block out headlights at night.
To block noise, without blocking light. See for example [0] (in Budapest, Hungary), where the house would not get much light during the day with a solid barrier and it's also kinda depressing to stare at a wall immediately in front of your window (even a busy road is a better view). (Note also the bird stickers.)
These barriers are put up for sound-proofing reasons. Mostly the barriers are opaque, but one often encounters the glass ones at the points along these routes when they run through towns. Here, the glass barriers provide soundproofing without blocking one’s view of the surrounding cityscape.
No, but with it I can still hear the highway. I'm sure it's certainly not as bad as it is without it, and I'm thankful it's there, but it's still audible. It sounds like it's maybe 2 or 3 blocks away vs right in your back yard.
They have them all over the place her in Czech Republic - bus stations, train stations, university buildings, anywhere with large glass panels or windows exposed to the outside world. I never noticed much of a bird-window-suicide problem back in the UK even though we had a big glass conservatory at my house
> I never noticed much of a bird-window-suicide problem back in the UK even though we had a big glass conservatory at my house
Particular lighting conditions make the glass act like a partial mirror, giving the impression of open space. It's more common in strong sunlight, which is why it's rare in the UK
My current desk faces a large wall sized window, ground floor, all glass building, surrounded by trees. At first I was excited to finally face a window, but I have seen SO many birds slam into it and die on impact. Walking around the perimeter, depending on the time of year, you'll see dead birds every 20 feet or so. this sounds promising
Just that small building causes 4-5 bird deaths per day? Good lord.
The picture in the article reminds me of an old youtube video that suggests painting thin white vertical stripes on your windows. Supposedly the birds avoid flying between the vertical gaps. Horizontal lines aren't as effective. I wonder who first discovered this method.
> Just that small building causes 4-5 bird deaths per day? Good lord.
He did say that it only happens during "this time of year". Collisions with buildings kill up to 1 billion birds per year in the US [1], so that sounds about right.
This reminds me of the awareness efforts by the Nature History museum in Rotterdam with the celebration of Dead Duck Day [1].
The case study's[2] abstract documents:
_On 5 June 1995 an adult male mallard (Anas platyrhynchos) collided with the glass façade of the Natuurmuseum Rotterdam and died. An other drake mallard raped the corpse almost continuously for 75 minutes._
Perhaps less visually distracting to the people inside the buildings, would be to create the same “striating patterns” on the building using those large decals that are used for public-transit advertising.
I regularly place seeds on my deck railing to feed the birds (and the squirrels). They knock some of the seeds to the deck floor.
Some birds go for the seeds on the deck floor. Those birds frequently fly between the balusters, both when coming and going. The balusters are 1.5" across, with 5" gaps between them.
Based on watching those birds, I would not have expected a "zen curtain" to help. I'd expect birds to think they could simply fly through the gaps.
> Mr Hines has been burying the birds that die in the nearby garden, and has been taking the birds that survive to a local vet.
I thought Lorikeets were classified as pests in both Western Australia and Queensland. A few years ago my mother and I found an injured baby Rainbow Lorikeet in the middle of the road (some kind of wing injury). We put it in a box and went to the vet. Right before handing it over, I happened to ask the receptionist: "You guys aren't going to just kill him or anything, right?"
That is when the receptionist decided to tell me that because Rainbow Lorikeets are considered pests, that is exactly what they would do. They wouldn't even look at the bird's injury.
I took him home instead; he recovered and went on to live with me. I really hope that this person had some kind of agreement or assurance from the vet that they would actually help the birds. Of course not every bird that flies into a window can be saved, but if he was taking them there expecting them to get some kind of general diagnosis or treatment those birds may not have gotten the ending he was expecting.
My place of employment desperately needs something like this. We have a number of sky bridges between buildings that are just a suspended hallway with floor to ceiling windows on both sides, so to birds it looks like they can fly through. We're located at the edge of the city, so there are just rolling hills of farmland and more natural space for birds to approach from. I regularly see dead birds under the sky bridges.
What I find fascinating about this is that there's probably a set of neurons in bird brains that specifically fire when looking at vertical lines. Here's a live recording of this effect from a cat[0], also known as the Hubel and Wiesel[1] experiment. Now those are being triggered, causing the bird to avoid the glass. This is an exceedingly simple solution to the problem. Very impressive!
This is an old trick used on homes, except window paint (typically white) is used to make thin vertical lines about 6 inches apart. It doesn't affect your view and it doesn't look ugly if you use a straight guide and thin lines.
My previous house one year a male Cardinal thought he saw a rival in a window and attacked it over and over again for what seemed like hours (his reflection). The female sat on the fence and I could swear was enjoying it.
That happened at my house (though with a different species). I closed the shade, which disrupted the reflection, so that the bird would not harm itself or waste its energy unnecessarily.
My house has large glass windows. The temporary solution (nothing more permanent than a temporary soultion) to the frequent dead birds was to stick little pieces of bright green masking tape on the window.
I wonder how subtle the lines could be, and still work? Could a stripey near-invisible 'shadow line' be silkscreened on the glass before its installed?
There was a particularly invisible glass wall in a parking lot near me. I guess enough people walked into it that they did the low-tech human version of this by sellotaping a piece of paper onto it that simply said “window”... I can’t imagine birds understanding that, but it was hilarious to see.
It's interesting how one community sees the rainbow lorikeet as an invasive pest that needs to be eliminated and another community is carefully redesigning buildings to save the poor rainbow lorikeets.
All native wildlife in Australia is protected -- cute cuddly and deadly poisonous animals equally.
Lizards, spiders and insects found in a home are often caught and released outside in the garden rather than killed (especially the huge huntsman spiders we get here which are harmless to humans). I'll even catch and release cockroaches rather than kill them.
> carefully redesigning buildings to save the poor rainbow lorikeets.
I would guess that even if they aren't an an endangered species, dealing with dead and injured birds daily is a nuisance. Simple measures like this, less nuisance in the long run.
I've seen a church in Kerala, India use plastic chain curtains over their doors to prevent birds flying inside. Seems they are commonly used for this purpose.
Saving you a click: because "Zen" is a marketing term meaning "calm or peaceful". Birds not slamming into glass is considered to be peaceful. Not be confused with the "Zen" of Zen Buddhism, where it doesn't mean that at all.
It does fit with the Zen Koan sort of if described - what sort of curtains are on the outside of a window and don't block light or noise? Not quite "What is the sound of one hand clapping." meditative question but it is getting there in surface weirdness.
A Midwest bank was remodeling their in-supermarket branches with glass walls. It looked really spiffy and let in a lot more light. Then a few weeks later they had decals up on some of the glass panels and they were frosting others and I asked a teller why they changed.
It turns out that many people were slamming into the glass walls, usually when turning a corner quickly, (my guess: while staring at their phones!) and hurting themselves, so the bank decided it was better to get ahead of the inevitable lawsuit and make the clear glass more visible.
How we've managed to survive this long as a species is beyond me.