Twice each year, countless birds migrate from the northernmost reaches of Alaska to the sunny warmth of Brazil. But their incredible journeys can be cut short by a simple pane of glass.
The transparent and reflective nature of windows makes glass invisible to birds, causing them to collide with buildings with deadly results. Now, Temple is teaming up with Audubon Pennsylvania to study “bird building” collisions. Since April 20th, nearly a dozen Temple students and staff volunteered to walk the campus daily for six weeks to get a sense of how widespread the problem is and what can be done to ease it.
“The birds are an important part of keeping nature in balance,” said Keith Russell, outreach coordinator at Audubon Pennsylvania. “And as they’re being killed in the millions, this problem is depressing their ability to do their job, in the same way that keeping insect numbers low eventually affects us and our crops.”
Shortly after 6 a.m., as the sun is rising, volunteers hit campus, scanning the streets and sidewalks for dead birds. Crushed beaks or birds found lying close to buildings are the hallmarks of a bird-building collision. The volunteers gather each bird in a bag and label where it was found. When the hour-long walk wraps up, they head to the BioLife Science Building, where the birds are stored in a freezer until all are collected at the end of the six week monitoring period. Eventually, the specimens will be added to the growing collection at the Academy of Natural Sciences, forever preserved for scientific study.
“The birds will be skinned and mounted in rows. You’ll be able to pick them up and examine them. So, if anyone wants to know just how many birds were found at Temple and what type of injuries they sustained, the information will literally be in their hands,” said Russell.
Dead birds are a common sight on Temple’s Main Campus. Concern among faculty and staff grew, and soon leadership agreed to participate in the bird monitoring project. And while Russell admits that knowing where the birds collided will help pinpoint problem buildings, he says taking data from one year is hardly enough to establish a pattern. Fortunately, Temple grounds crews kept their own bird collision records from a few years back, and though they are sporadic, they help reveal where the problem areas are on campus so that corrective measures might be taken.
“I am hoping that for existing buildings, there will be practical, low-cost actions that we can take to mitigate this problem,” said Sandra McDade, director of The Office of Sustainability.
The solutions for buildings already built are limited to blinds or window treatments on the glass itself, such as epoxy dots or reflection glaze. But as Temple positions itself as a steward of environmental responsibility, it makes sense to begin addressing what role its buildings play in bird building collisions, the second-highest cause — behind habitat loss — of bird population decline.
“Sustainability isn’t just about energy consciousness or “going green,” said McDade. “It’s about all aspects of our planet. So, the welfare of birds is a natural concern,” said McDade.
And as Temple joins Center City as the second host-site involved with the bird monitoring project, campus may become a test site for possible solutions. Eventually, those solutions could be duplicated throughout the city, allowing birds to migrate safely and keeping nature’s delicate balance in place.
The bird collision study is a collaboration between the Audubon Society of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia Zoo and the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, made possible by a grant from National Audubon's Together Green program, which is funded by Toyota.