Talyn Faulkner, a zoology major at SUNY Oswego, has begun a research project to study how the campus’ buildings and windows impact birds.
Windows can appear safe to birds because they reflect trees or the sky, according to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s website, but in reality, they are extremely dangerous for the animals.
Window strikes kill anywhere between 365 and 988 million birds annually, according to a 2014 BioOne Complete study.
Faulkner said the goal of their project is to determine if there are significant numbers of birds striking windows on campus.
A former research student noticed many birds hitting windows on campus and began some personal research, Faulkner said. The student brought up the idea of studying the events to Dr. Daniel Baldassarre, assistant professor in the biological sciences department at SUNY Oswego, to determine if there was evidence of a problem or find a solution. Faulkner was then offered the project, with the assistance of Baldassarre as principal investigator, and began the process a little over a year ago.
Faulkner spent the last two semesters building the project. This included fine details like how to survey bird strikes and what buildings to focus on. More key components included figuring out how to collect data and what data to collect, getting blueprints of buildings on campus, planning out routes and gathering volunteers to survey the campus.
The project specifically set out to see how different circumstances would affect the possibility a bird would strike a window, Faulkner said. For example, how the size, material, thickness and reflectivity of a window, as well as the sun, tree-cover and on-campus location, could potentially be a factor in the likelihood of bird strikes.
“If you have one window that is heavily reflective and no birds are striking it, that tells us something,” Faulkner said. “If we can figure out what the problem is, we can possibly find a solution to that problem and decrease the amount of strikes on campus.”
Official data collection began this semester, Faulkner said. Each week, volunteers go around campus on specific routes searching for evidence of bird strikes. Volunteers look for things such as bodies, skeletons or large amounts of feathers within three meters of the buildings on their route. Window prints also serve as evidence of a strike. They take pictures, record their location and other details, and finally, the data is gathered on a Google form.
There have been no conclusions yet as data is still being collected, Faulkner said.
There are some actions individuals can take to make windows more bird-friendly, such as screens, netting, decals, bird tape and one-way transparent film, according to allaboutbirds.org.
If you ever find a bird after it has collided with a window, “examine it for external injuries,” Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s website said. “If the wings are both held properly, neither dangling, and the eyes seem normal, see if it can perch in a branch unassisted. If so, leave it to recover on its own.” If the bird is injured, bring them to a wildlife rehabilitator near you.
Faulkner said that the project has enough volunteers for this semester, and data collection will continue for another couple of weeks.
Faulkner said they are still discussing if data collection will proceed next semester as well, but they hope to continue the project. Anyone interested in joining future research can contact them via email at cfaulkne@oswego.edu.
