FYI, not all bird glass has visible fritting. They also come with UV reflective coatings that are almost transparent to the human eye (unless you’re really close to the glass), e.g.,
Some UV treatments are stripes, others similar to an elongated version of the fritting from OP, and then there’s the camo-stick-like version above. Stripes are the most noticeable to humans.
ETA: From personal experience, the glass is completely transparent from ~2+ meters away, and you have to be very close or staring directly at glare from the sun to see it when <2m away.
ETA2: Someone else shared the Wikipedia article on bird collisions below, but I wanted to take a second to highlight this graph from the article:
If you think bird safe glass is cool, spaying/neutering your cats and keeping them inside or on a leash is waaay cooler.
(This graph doesn’t include indirect causes of death like climate change, deforestation, and pesticide use, but that doesn’t make responsible pet ownership any less cool)
birds have a 4th color cone receptor. so thier eye sight is more advanced than ours.
That’s blowing my mind that birds, masters of the sky - a realm to which they can easily escape to where few can follow, are such a frequent snack for cats, who under usual circumstances don’t often fly. Cats are like ninjas.
Cats are expert hunters
they aren’t. only a small percentage of cats live up to the ‘serial killer’ reputation, someting like less than 10%. most cats can’t catch shit, and what they do catch are easy prey, like weak/injuried, or baby animals.
If a cat is outside and used to hunting, they are good hunters, I’ve never seen a farmcat that couldn’t catch mice. Frankly, if there are mice and squirrels around, cats rarely bother with birds. If you let a housecat outside, it’ll be a terrible hunter.
It’s almost like practice makes perfect.
Oh til, thanks
I once took over my neighbour’s cat. He was very scared and timid. Stayed behind the fridge for the first weekend. Took half a year before he was comfortable enough to be petted. Never wanted to go outside. Didn’t even want to go into the stairwell of our building. Until some day it did. I was really proud of his newfound courage. But it was very eager, so I followed it. It went upstairs to the common attic, where I saw a very scared looking pigeon sitting on a box surrounded by way too many feathers.
From that moment on I kept him inside again. Apparently even that super timid scared cat will kill breeding pigeons.
I had an indoor/outdoor cat that would catch birds at night, bring them home dead , and play with them.
What a mess.
Next cat would only go out during the day and lay around. He did manage to catch two rats
Pretty wild to think these goofy furballs we keep around as pets are apex predators.
I had a cat one time that liked to play fetch. Just like a dog. Never seen anything like it.
they are not apex predators.
cats are prey for larger animals and are often killed my racoons and other stronger animals.
Yeah, true enough.
Someone should figure out how to paint cats so that birds can avoid them.
They have.
Birdsafe collars reduce bird catches by 87%. (A bell will reduce bird catches by 41%).
Is the cat issue specific to the Americas or something? Because here in Europe we’ve had cats for thousands of years and in Africa they existed long before that even, so I don’t see how some pets getting out sometimes is any worse than the feral cats that existed long ago
Birds that get eaten tend to have high reproductive rates, and if predator levels drop their population gets so high they start to die from hunger or disease (which spreads faster in crowded conditions). Many predators eat an incredible number of animals - a large owl may eat several small birds every day for itself, and a multiple of that if feeding nestlings. Cats aren’t unique here.
Domestic cats can be a threat to specific populations already endangered by other factors, but usually those are ground animals. Cats being a threat to population levels of birds in most of the world just isn’t believable to me.
Also note how low wind turbines actually are on that list. The oil industry lives to harp on the number of birds killed by wind turbines, but you never hear them about the much larger number of birds killed by vehicles.
Still worth reducing every number on that list of course, but keep some perspective.
Many of these graphs were made to show that windmills do not really contribute to bird death.
Well it’s not like we have windmills anywhere anymore now that we have electricity. You might be thinking about wind turbines, which aren’t very good for milling, but can be used to generate electricity that can then be used for an electric mill
You are right of course. In my language we generally use the same word for both.
How do these numbers compare to the number of chickens, turkeys, and ducks killed in animal agriculture? I think those are human-related deaths, so it’s a bit odd to me they’re not included. (I would assume they blow these numbers out of the water)
so it’s a bit odd to me they’re not included
It’s not actually, since that isn’t what the graph is about.
Obviously the intention here is “human related wild bird deaths”, but I think it betrays a pretty huge blind spot to title the graph in this way and miss ~90% of all human related bird deaths.
I think the concern isn’t just that birds die, but overall species health. If we doubled turkey death, the assumption would be we doubled turkey pop first. With wild birds we don’t have that assumption
It’s mostly a safe assumption for wild birds, too, though, and for similar reasons. It’s easier to find a young oblivious bird, or a desperately hungry bird taking a risk in a less protected feeding spot, to snack on if the population is healthy, and when the population is smaller there is less predation because they all fit within the safe feeding areas. If a wild population is large, there will be more deaths due to disease (which spreads faster in crowded conditions), and more deaths from hunger as they outstrip their food sources. If the population is kept in check more by predators than by disease or hunger, it’s generally not a threat to the size of the population.
There are some specific locations that have certain animal populations actually under threat by domestic cats, but those are almost all ground animals and not birds.
When they say Vehicles i bet a LOT of that is airplanes. Bird strikes are more common than you’d think.
I’d guess the largest chunk of that bar is vehicle-related emissions.
Do you think they’d count that as vehicle deaths? It seems like emissions and pollution would be grouped together in their own environmental category. As it’s hard to say “This death was due to emissions from this specific thing’s emissions” rather than pollution in general.
I’ve definitely seen a statistic like that so it doesn’t seem to hard to come to a good estimate, though I can’t recall the source unfortunately.
They’re starting to crack down on cats in my area. They have a curfew. In some districts, they are not allowed outside. There are areas near me where cats are outright banned.
The birds that die near me tend to hit the glass then fall into my dog’s mouth. The cleaner the glass, the more it happens.
The cats have a curfew? Have you met cats?
there are a lot of anti-cat nutcases out there who basically think cats should never be let outside ever. and are trying to change laws to make this vision a reality, under the guise of ‘protecting wildlife’.
not any different than people who wnat to make the entire interet require age verification to ‘protect the children’
it’s stupid but it’s gaining traction because there isn’t any organized resistance to it.
Except we have mountains of undeniable evidence that cats harm birds and other wildlife.
Cats instinctively kill birds and other small rodents. While I certainly see the appeal of outside cats the people arguing based on environmental concerns also have a point.
Additionally you should be really careful letting your cat out as it can get into something and then make you sick as a result
I’m much more likely to die in a car accident, and yet I have to drive almost everyday…
Ah that explains it. But why would they bother with the dots? Perhaps to make it clear to others that the window is compliant? All the information I can find online seems to suggest that it’s the dots that makes the window visible to the birds.
From the wiki for bird-window collisions:
There are several methods of preventing bird-window strikes. The use of ultraviolet (UV) signals to make windows appear visible to birds, while once one of the most common means of combatting this issue, is no longer recommended by experts. This is because while some birds can see UV light, not all can. Other solutions include window film (as long as it is placed on the exterior of the glass) and ceramic frit glass (glass with fritdots).[30] Windows can also be covered with decals spaced no more than 5 cm horizontally or 10 cm vertically to prevent collisions.[31]
I had assumed it was cheaper to do dots, but it’s actually just more broadly effective. That’s a better reason :)
Dots are cheaper than UV filters and easier to apply retroactively. Both have the same effect of creating a visible obstruction for birds to discourage strikes.
My dumbass kept reading bird class. All building tenants must be able to accurately ID local bird life.
We need these for Humans. I work in a building with a large public work space. It is in the corner of the building with three glass walls. The single door is in the middle of the glass wall. We have had so many people walking right into the glass that we had to put logos on the glass to keep people from doing it. We have one lady with a huge collection of security camera footage of all the people doing it.
I’m glad the cameras were not installed when I did that a few days after I started hooking up all the networking gear.
Worth it. Thank you smart people for saving what birds we can.
IDK, some birds are really loud and annoying
not nearly as loud and annoying as some people
Does it really work, or do birds still crash into the windows, misjudging the small dots for insects?
Birds probably have better eyesight than you or I
But this occupies 0.001% of my visual field, just to save some wildlife?
More of this kind of regulation please.
Well, since there are alternatives that achieve the same, but invisible to the human eye, i still think its an annoying choice.
Any idea what they are? haven’t seen those before, lol. But seriously, I’m curious
heres one product https://www.birdshades.com/
I assume the others use relatively similar tech. Since human and bird vision doesnt line up perfectly, there are wavelengths visible to birds outside of our vision.
i hit a goose with a car once and i still mourn that moment.
I was 20 minutes late to work once. Boss gave me a freebie when I told her that I was playing crossing guard for a family of ducks crossing the road.
I’d promote you for doing that
My grandparents lived near an estuary and had to put the dot stickers on their big, west-facing sliding glass doors to stop the high-speed waterfowl crashes that would happen every month or so. While I certainly understand it’s best for the ducks, one of my oldest memories is of hearing a BANG! And looking out the door to see a disoriented duck staggering around on the deck before shaking it off and flying away unsteadily.
Many birds die afterwards by cerebral bleeding.
Is it just spotted or are there other features (that I can’t see)?
It’s made out of birds. Is it really worth it?
It says 'fuck off’ in 7 different bird languages
