How to stop birds flying into window panes? (1 Viewer)

My friend asked me this question. His house has large modern windows made from single panes of glass. They had a baby starling crash into the window (and die ) and a pigeon crash into the window and break the glass (AFAIK the pigeon survived).

Any advice on how to prevent the birds from this silly and dangerous tricks?

This subject comes up frequently and there are several threads addressing it.

Here's a recent one.

https://www.birdforum.net/showthread.php?t=325394&highlight=window

Hi,

katastrofa said:

Any advice on how to prevent the birds from this silly and dangerous tricks?

Click to expand...

The German birding magazine "Vögel" years ago had an article on this topic. If I remember correctly, the method that gave the best success was drawing a dense criss-cross pattern across the window pane, using a special UV reflective marker visible to birds, but not to humans. This treatmeant would have to be repeated regularly, as the marker paint tends to wash off.

On the other hand, here's a Swiss article that doesn't consider UV markers effective, and suggests to use stickers or nylon threads instead:

http://vogelglas.vogelwarte.ch/assets/files/merkblaetter/MB_Voegel_und_Glas_D_2017.pdf

(German, with example pictures)

The popular raptor silhouettes are almost useless. Any opaque shape on the window pane would be considered an obstacle by the birds, and avoided. However, birds might still try to pass through the pane right next to the silhouette as it doesn't appear like an actual, threatening raptor to them.

Another German link:

https://www.nabu.de/tiere-und-pflanzen/voegel/helfen/01079.html

Regards,

Henning

Thanks Henning - hadn't heard about the UV markers.

I've refined the hanging string and cork deterrent by replacing the corks with another piece of wood at the bottom which stops the strings from getting tangled.

Thanks!