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Welcome to Your Daily Dot where Dot will share tips, advice, and stories on how we can make our world better. |
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All Dear Dot illustrations by Elissa Turnbull. |
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Dear Reader,
Dot has a neighbor who has attached a bird feeder to her front window. While I’m delighted that a fellow bird-lover lives close by, I’m working up the nerve to tap at her door and point out that the placement of her feeder makes an avian collision with her window much more likely. It’s a risk that plenty of people who just want a close look at the birdfeeding buffet are oblivious to, but according to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, more than 1 billion birds die annually in the U.S. due to collisions with windows. Along with placing feeders and birdbaths at least 1½ feet from windows, there’s plenty more we can do to make birds safer — including:
🦅 Put patterned stickers on your windows to break up the reflection and give the birds a visual cue that there’s a surface there. Companies like CollidEscape sell window sheets with dotted patterns and tinting.
🐦 Draw patterns on your windows using a bar of soap or window paint (repeat after a rainfall). Or hang ribbons or strings on the outside of your windows about four inches apart.
🐈 Keep cats indoors. (Dots favorite data nerd, Hannah Ritchie at Our World in Data tells us that cats are singled-pawedly responsible for killing about a billion birds each year in the U.S. alone. Cars, buildings, and pesticides kill tens of millions of birds each. Wind turbines are responsible for about a million bird deaths.) |
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Please ensure bird feeders are at least 1 1/2 feet from windows so that hungry birds don't collide with the glass. |
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🦉 Turn out lights at night, including exterior decorative lights. It’s especially important to keep exterior lights off during migration seasons.
🐧 FLAP (Fatal Light Awareness Program) recommends that if a bird hits your window, you should gently place it inside an unwaxed paper bag or cardboard box. Ensure that the bird remains upright (“you can create a donut out of tissue for it to sit in,” reads FLAPS’ literature). Then place it in a quiet location away from people/pets. Leave the bag or box open at the top so the bird can fly away once it’s recovered. Contact a nearby wildlife rehabilitation center, if necessary.
🐤 Report bird collisions to the Global Building Collision Mapper, a citizen science database.
For more information about how Philly (among other cities) is working to prevent bird collisions during migration, check out this Bluedot story by contributor Kellie Gormley.
And with spring migration in full swing, check out this tool where you can type in your zip code or county and get an accurate count of just how many winged travelers are currently navigating your particular flight path.
Visibly,
Dot |
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