FYI, not all bird glass has visible fritting. They also come with UV reflective coatings that are almost transparent to the human eye (unless you’re really close to the glass), e.g.,
Some UV treatments are stripes, others similar to an elongated version of the fritting from OP, and then there’s the camo-stick-like version above. Stripes are the most noticeable to humans.
ETA: From personal experience, the glass is completely transparent from ~2+ meters away, and you have to be very close or staring directly at glare from the sun to see it when <2m away.
ETA2: Someone else shared the Wikipedia article on bird collisions below, but I wanted to take a second to highlight this graph from the article:
If you think bird safe glass is cool, spaying/neutering your cats and keeping them inside or on a leash is waaay cooler.
(This graph doesn’t include indirect causes of death like climate change, deforestation, and pesticide use, but that doesn’t make responsible pet ownership any less cool)
That’s blowing my mind that birds, masters of the sky - a realm to which they can easily escape to where few can follow, are such a frequent snack for cats, who under usual circumstances don’t often fly. Cats are like ninjas.
Cats are expert hunters
they aren’t. only a small percentage of cats live up to the ‘serial killer’ reputation, someting like less than 10%. most cats can’t catch shit, and what they do catch are easy prey, like weak/injuried, or baby animals.
I once took over my neighbour’s cat. He was very scared and timid. Stayed behind the fridge for the first weekend. Took half a year before he was comfortable enough to be petted. Never wanted to go outside. Didn’t even want to go into the stairwell of our building. Until some day it did. I was really proud of his newfound courage. But it was very eager, so I followed it. It went upstairs to the common attic, where I saw a very scared looking pigeon sitting on a box surrounded by way too many feathers.
From that moment on I kept him inside again. Apparently even that super timid scared cat will kill breeding pigeons.
Oh til, thanks
I had an indoor/outdoor cat that would catch birds at night, bring them home dead , and play with them.
What a mess.
Next cat would only go out during the day and lay around. He did manage to catch two rats
My cat ran a mouse up my curtain yestetday. Came to bed, there’s a cat just staring up at the wall over my bed… I figured it was greebles, but then the mouse poked it’s head out of the grommets…
Needless to say I managed to scare it off the curtain and we teamed up to get it out of the house.
My cats don’t get to go outside. I used to have a free-access catio, but a former cat would bring chipmunks inside and let them go, and once kept a dead squirrel in a box in an unused closet for three days while he ate it (i didn’t actually think to look in the closet he kept going into, cats are weird and do weird things…), so…. That’s not allowed anymore.
My parents at would do the same with chipmunks.
That cat would also growl at kids waking home from school while sitting inside near the window.
Pretty wild to think these goofy furballs we keep around as pets are apex predators.
I had a cat one time that liked to play fetch. Just like a dog. Never seen anything like it.
they are not apex predators.
cats are prey for larger animals and are often killed my racoons and other stronger animals.
They occasionally get taken by eagles here. Small dogs too.
Yeah, true enough.
Not sure house cats count as apex predators because they are also prey animals. A tiger is an apex predator because what eats tigers? But there’s stuff that’ll eat house cats.
Nevertheless house cats are extremely effective at hunting small prey. I had a maine coon that drove my city block’s vole population extinct for a good ten years. Big dude either loved digging or hated voles.
Yeah, that’s true. I got a little excited with my assessment.
I had a cat one time that liked to play fetch. Just like a dog. Never seen anything like it.
I had a cat like that :)
Colorpoint shorthairs (the ones that look like regular cats, not necessarily the over-bread siamese) are known for that sort of behavior. Mine was a cream colorpoint, and basically looked solid white, but “catdog” is how that breed is normally described, because they tend to be wildly friendly and play fetch.
I had a blue point that was a mouse hunter and she was so proud of every kill. She’s do her little proud walk with it in her mouth and everything like, “hey look what I got!”
Gotta land sometime, bitch 🐈⬛
There’s that time of the year when birds land, make nests, lay eggs and have to hang around to feed their young. That’s a very vulnerable time for them. Make sure your bird house and bird feeder are cat proof.
I once physically removed a still living bird from my cats clutches and set it free. I saw him get it. Birds are just fucking oblivious. Standing around pecking at the ground and not checking their surroundings.
The graph’s message is clear: immediately dismantle all wind turbines and ramp up clean coal!
/s
“Beautiful, clean coal.”
Buht them be burd blenders!!! 😵💫
Just make a bunch Beta-M units for household use
Also note how low wind turbines actually are on that list. The oil industry lives to harp on the number of birds killed by wind turbines, but you never hear them about the much larger number of birds killed by vehicles.
Still worth reducing every number on that list of course, but keep some perspective.
Many of these graphs were made to show that windmills do not really contribute to bird death.
Well it’s not like we have windmills anywhere anymore now that we have electricity. You might be thinking about wind turbines, which aren’t very good for milling, but can be used to generate electricity that can then be used for an electric mill
You are right of course. In my language we generally use the same word for both.
Ah that explains it. But why would they bother with the dots? Perhaps to make it clear to others that the window is compliant? All the information I can find online seems to suggest that it’s the dots that makes the window visible to the birds.
From the wiki for bird-window collisions:
There are several methods of preventing bird-window strikes. The use of ultraviolet (UV) signals to make windows appear visible to birds, while once one of the most common means of combatting this issue, is no longer recommended by experts. This is because while some birds can see UV light, not all can. Other solutions include window film (as long as it is placed on the exterior of the glass) and ceramic frit glass (glass with fritdots).[30] Windows can also be covered with decals spaced no more than 5 cm horizontally or 10 cm vertically to prevent collisions.[31]
I had assumed it was cheaper to do dots, but it’s actually just more broadly effective. That’s a better reason :)
Dots are cheaper than UV filters and easier to apply retroactively. Both have the same effect of creating a visible obstruction for birds to discourage strikes.
Dots and UV are different solutions to the same problem, they both make the glass visible to birds. Its one or the other usually, not both.
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They’re starting to crack down on cats in my area. They have a curfew. In some districts, they are not allowed outside. There are areas near me where cats are outright banned.
The birds that die near me tend to hit the glass then fall into my dog’s mouth. The cleaner the glass, the more it happens.
The cats have a curfew? Have you met cats?
If they break curfew, they are captured and kept in cages. They might be forcefully sterilized or even killed via lethal injection.
That’s is certainly something you could do I guess
If I ever get a cat again, it will be indoor-only.
That was my understanding of how most animal control departments deal with non-human animals the are in violation of district policies.
that’s horrible, what the hell area do you live in?
there are a lot of anti-cat nutcases out there who basically think cats should never be let outside ever. and are trying to change laws to make this vision a reality, under the guise of ‘protecting wildlife’.
not any different than people who wnat to make the entire interet require age verification to ‘protect the children’
it’s stupid but it’s gaining traction because there isn’t any organized resistance to it.
Except we have mountains of undeniable evidence that cats harm birds and other wildlife.
The internet regulation people have mountains of CSAM. And that’s just their personal stash.
Cats instinctively kill birds and other small rodents. While I certainly see the appeal of outside cats the people arguing based on environmental concerns also have a point.
Additionally you should be really careful letting your cat out as it can get into something and then make you sick as a result
I’m much more likely to die in a car accident, and yet I have to drive almost everyday…
99% of cats are not native to wildlife in Europe or the americas. there are very very few specialised to their environment felines that look like housecats but it’s very few numbers (often dwindeling because of housecats). small feline != housecats or feral cats.
Our vet recommended keep our cat inside to prevent it from getting FIV, which was present in at least some of the local feral cats.
Commodore lived in the neighborhood longer than we had, tho. If we had tried to keep him inside, if he ever escaped he simply wouldn’t have come back.
I won’t make that “mistake” with my next cat, if any.
You can train cats just like many other domesticated animals
Youcapable people can train cats. That’s what i had to get into an idiot neighbors skull. His outdoor cat had been a pain in the ass all around, and his excuse was that one cannot train a cat.
So all of the windows in NYC look like Eddie Van Halen’s guitar to birds?
Neat.
How do these numbers compare to the number of chickens, turkeys, and ducks killed in animal agriculture? I think those are human-related deaths, so it’s a bit odd to me they’re not included. (I would assume they blow these numbers out of the water)
so it’s a bit odd to me they’re not included
It’s not actually, since that isn’t what the graph is about.
Obviously the intention here is “human related wild bird deaths”, but I think it betrays a pretty huge blind spot to title the graph in this way and miss ~90% of all human related bird deaths.
I think the concern isn’t just that birds die, but overall species health. If we doubled turkey death, the assumption would be we doubled turkey pop first. With wild birds we don’t have that assumption
I believe that chickens and other farm birds account for something like 50-60% of all the birds alive at any given time.
With some very hand-wavy maths I’d say its at least a 10x increase. ~50+ billion slaughtered for food vs ~4 billion from outdoor cats. Don’t quote me on that, they’re just the first two numbers I came across.
I’d argue it’s somewhat fair to exclude agriculture from the original chart because the damage cats do to wild bird populations is off the charts and owners should recognise that reality.
If you have a problem with feral cats in an area, find a secluded spot nearby and plant catnip.
You will now have feral cats that are high AF & not killing shit.
Someone should figure out how to paint cats so that birds can avoid them.
They have.
Birdsafe collars reduce bird catches by 87%. (A bell will reduce bird catches by 41%).
Ha! That’s really cool!
Right!? I wish more people knew about them. I’m not advocating for outdoor pets but if owners are going to insist they should at least make efforts to reduce the cat’s hunting efficiency.
“Domestic cats kill an estimated 2.4 billion birds each year in the United States…”
I would not have guessed such an incredibly high number. 😳
Is the cat issue specific to the Americas or something? Because here in Europe we’ve had cats for thousands of years and in Africa they existed long before that even, so I don’t see how some pets getting out sometimes is any worse than the feral cats that existed long ago
I have always suspected it’s a minor bit of public misdirection to keep the stray cat population down in North America. Other parts of the world have much larger numbers of outdoor cats and their bird populations are no worse off.
When they say Vehicles i bet a LOT of that is airplanes. Bird strikes are more common than you’d think.
I’d guess the largest chunk of that bar is vehicle-related emissions.
Do you think they’d count that as vehicle deaths? It seems like emissions and pollution would be grouped together in their own environmental category. As it’s hard to say “This death was due to emissions from this specific thing’s emissions” rather than pollution in general.
I’ve definitely seen a statistic like that so it doesn’t seem to hard to come to a good estimate, though I can’t recall the source unfortunately.
I think I read something like 90% of the cat killings come from non-pet cats, and there’s maybe three pets for every four to five strays. Obviously, spay/neuter is the best defense, and on top of that maybe going a step further and trapping your local strays. And unless we start treating stray cats like pests, I’m not sure how doable it is to try to call the population via spay neuter.
And I’ll be honest, I’m less concerned about the mammals deaths, because I’d never be mad at my car for catching mice. Catch mice all day dude.
And if I’m being really honest, I think some birds are real assholes, but maybe that’s a discussion for another day.
I knew it was bad, but its nice to see it in context like this. I love cats, but have never been able to afford them. They’ll ve rescues and be trapped inside ;getting smooshed in my arms.
Thanks.
Wait until you figure out how many birds humans kill.
birds have a 4th color cone receptor. so thier eye sight is more advanced than ours.
My grandparents lived near an estuary and had to put the dot stickers on their big, west-facing sliding glass doors to stop the high-speed waterfowl crashes that would happen every month or so. While I certainly understand it’s best for the ducks, one of my oldest memories is of hearing a BANG! And looking out the door to see a disoriented duck staggering around on the deck before shaking it off and flying away unsteadily.
Many birds die afterwards by cerebral bleeding.
Bird–window collisions (also known as bird strikes after the aviation term or as window strikes) are a problem in both low- and high-density areas worldwide. Birds strike glass because reflective or transparent glass is often invisible to them.[1] Previous research estimated that between 100 million and 1 billion birds are killed by collisions in the United States annually,[2] but a 2024 study on the survival rate of bird-building collision victims indicates that previous research was vastly underestimating the number of deaths caused by collisions, and in actuality well over 1 billion birds die from collisions in the United States every year.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bird–window_collisions
The ducks that were able to walk away were lucky, probably not flying at full speed yet. And they were still probably concussed afterwards.
Dad, were you flying home drunk again?
*takes a swig* Fucken’ Huumans!You could always tell they were pissed off. Visibly confused. But definitely pissed too.
when they start leaving little presents on your doorstep, that’s how you know
Worth it. Thank you smart people for saving what birds we can.
IDK, some birds are really loud and annoying
not nearly as loud and annoying as some people
What about people glass to keep people out?
“look at all those bugs just sitting there! I’m going in”
But this occupies 0.001% of my visual field, just to save some wildlife?
More of this kind of regulation please.
Well, since there are alternatives that achieve the same, but invisible to the human eye, i still think its an annoying choice.
Any idea what they are? haven’t seen those before, lol. But seriously, I’m curious
heres one product https://www.birdshades.com/
I assume the others use relatively similar tech. Since human and bird vision doesnt line up perfectly, there are wavelengths visible to birds outside of our vision.
You can also buy strips of those dots to put on existing windows. I have two glass doors on the back of my house that birds flew into so I spent an afternoon applying them and it’s decreased enough that I haven’t noticed it happening again, at least. They have been up for a few years without wear.
I had to put decals on the bottom of my glass door to keep my dumb dog from bonkin’ his noggin.
Does it really work, or do birds still crash into the windows, misjudging the small dots for insects?
Birds probably have better eyesight than you or I
that’s brilliant
Assuming it works.
TLDR. This paper recommends Birdshades UV stripes over the Haverkamp dots. Either film must be on the outside of the window, not the inside.
i hit a goose with a car once and i still mourn that moment.
I was 20 minutes late to work once. Boss gave me a freebie when I told her that I was playing crossing guard for a family of ducks crossing the road.
I’d promote you for doing that
I once ran over a rabbit
We need these for Humans. I work in a building with a large public work space. It is in the corner of the building with three glass walls. The single door is in the middle of the glass wall. We have had so many people walking right into the glass that we had to put logos on the glass to keep people from doing it. We have one lady with a huge collection of security camera footage of all the people doing it.
I’m glad the cameras were not installed when I did that a few days after I started hooking up all the networking gear.
How much windex do you guys go through?
Considering only two small sections of the Building are not all glass quite a lot.
Is it just spotted or are there other features (that I can’t see)?
It says 'fuck off’ in 7 different bird languages
But is it considered a ‘dick move’ in bird culture?
What I’d like to know is why did they write it in penguin?
Wowwwwww.
It’s fligots like you that make integration into the broader avian society so difficult for penguins.
While I understand where you’re coming from, let me ask you a question. When’s the last time you tried to get into Club Penguin?
bird law is not governed by reason
It’s made out of birds. Is it really worth it?
Iirc, The dotted design is the only one that has proven effectiveness.
Bird stickers e.g. are largely ineffective.
It’s fascinating that it’s only some dots, and that it’s apparently enough.
Some of them have some different kind of shading between layers of glass, something about how birds see colors. Different designs etched in the glass. I’m trying to remember back to a presentation I sat through on it.
One part that I do remember is that it’s not all about skyscrapers, and that it’s just like the first three or four stories. Skyscrapers tend to get the most attention because you don’t get a ton of low rise buildings with curtain walls of full glass.
So we can just stick on googly eyes?
Cool, you can play games with these dots.
