Birds and Windows: Reduxed Redux

In the years since buying this crazy house, I’ve worked to curb the number of bird window strikes, as with over 100 external panes of glass, strikes were a chronic issue. First I tried small and simple colored clings, which only helped a bit. Then I used my Cricut and some RabbitGoo to make some bird silhouettes that I plastered across the problem windows.

But we still had the occasional fatality, especially during the spring and early summer when fledglings were out and about. I call them bonks–the telltale sound of another bird colliding with our windows. So last summer I got very serious–I ordered several hundred feet of the CollidEscape Tape, and with the help of ladders, our man-lift, and an assistant, the tape was put up across all the problem windows: the north-facing windows of my office; the south- and west-facing windows of the great room; and the sliding doors at the studio building.

And a full year later, I can happily report the number of bonks of any sort has dramatically decreased. We have had a few stuns and a handful of deaths, but not on the glass treated with the tape. Those strikes were one-offs–nothing before had hit that particular glass and nothing has hit it since, so I’m still evaluating if I should install tape on those spots.

An added bonus? Our success even spawned an article for the newsletter of The Los Gatos Birdwatcher, a bird feeding/watching store down in Los Gatos!