Reflections on a Transparent Problem: Window Bird Strikes with John Turner

all right we're going to get started uh thanks for coming out uh for our Earth Day uh activities today uh just to let you know that um immediately following this uh talk there will be a common hour event in the bird sanctuary where we have well most importantly we have snacks um and uh a chance to visit the bird sanctuary how many people have been to in the bird sanctuary before not that many right so so this is one of hoster's hidden gems uh for really stupid reasons uh that we have no control over it's usually kept locked um so this is your opportunity to check it out it's a really beautiful place um to get to the bird sanctuary all you have to do is cross over the unispan and then walk over by the main entrance to the campus where the University Club is and the bird sanctuary is just at the the entrance is at the back of the parking lot next to the University Club so it's really easy to find Wander over we we have some speakers uh from campus who are going to be talking about what's gone on in the last year um to promote campus sustainability so we have the director of grounds talking about the work that they're doing to uh plant trees plant native pollinator Gardens and things like that we have and and a few other people who are going to talk about different aspects of sustainability on campus uh so again that's from that's during common hour uh so pretty much after this is done if you get over to the entrance to the bird sanctuary and it looks like it's locked it's not really locked the lock isn't locked so you can you can just go right in wander around check it out and uh we'll be over there shortly if we're not already there so that's that's happening during common hour and then at 2:40 back in this room there's a panel discussion on uh climate protesting and climate change activism so we have some students and faculty who are going to be talking about how to you know be effective uh um lobbyists for for climate change action all right so uh let's uh move on to our program uh for the next hour or so um so my name uh I I should probably introduce myself uh my name is uh Dr Brett Bennington and I'm the chair of the Department of geology environment and sustainability on campus and uh I'm one of the people um who's usually involved in organizing Earth Day activities for for obvious reasons um and uh it's it's my great pleasure to be hosting this particular event uh and welcoming to campus um Mr John Turner uh John is uh kind of a legend on Long Island in my opinion he's is a a lifelong conservation leader um if you've ever heard of the pine Barons and and the the tremendous uh effort that went on to preserve the pine Barons to basically take this uh 100,000 acre area of of wild land on Eastern Long Island and prevent it from being developed uh John was was one of the one of the founding members of that effort he is a um co-founder of the uh Long Island pine Baron society and you were in high school when you got involved in that I think um which was just a few years ago right thato young straight from the straight from the man uh John is currently serving as a conservation policy Advocate at the cck environmental Association which he'll talk a little bit about um where he's involved in a number of projects around Long Island that seek to protect and restore our natural spaces and our Wildlife um he's more knowledgeable about Long Island's Natural History than anyone I have ever met and uh he shares this knowledge very generously with teachers students and the public uh he runs field trips um he has a Blog called nature matters which you can Google and and find that online uh he's the author of a book uh exploring the other Island a seasonal nature guide to Long Islands I'm sorry a seasonal nature guide to Long Island at and a children's book called whan's wandering drop about the about the water cycle as a lifelong birder John is passionate about protecting Birds uh which are struggling to survive in our built environments um birds are under threat from habitat loss from declining food sources um house cats and window strikes um on our buildings and that is the topic of his talk today so please give a warm welcome to John Turner thank thank you Dr Bennington for that overly kind introduction um so I wanted to just quickly kind of run through a little bit about uh the seok environmental Association you see the icon down in the in the corner here and you may Wonder oh I've not heard about that organization what does it do and then we'll launch into a a discussion about uh window bird strikes which is again one of the kind of signature programs that seuck is focusing on so seatuck got its Beginnings in the mid to late 1980s and at that time pretty much the sole focus of the organization was to try to identify and protect what we call Colonial Waterbird sites that is places where black skimmers and common turns and Lease turns other other seabirds that Nest Long Long Island's Coastal habitats um are found because we humans love using peaches and love walking along the the shore and has put us into conflict with these birds and the result being that these many of these birds have declined some cases precipitously and then over the years Seck evolved to be involved a lot of other issues and I guess the takeaway message to you about seok is that it is a islandwide Wildlife Conservation organization pretty much every type of wildlife be it reptiles amphibians Birds insects and fish just and and mammals we uh have have some uh involvement in it's really a exciting place to work um I've uh had the the great pleasure of working for SE talk for about six years now on a in a part-time capacity in my areas of responsibility include trying to advance strategies to protect horseshoe crabs Diamond Back terpens issue of the window bird strikes um and then um one kind of habitat issue and that is dealing with water quality trying to promote the more extensive use of water reuse as a concept where water from a sewage treatment plant is not discharged back into the ground or to the you know Coastal Waters around Long Island but is again as a name in suggests is is reused for some some worthwhile purpose most notably on Long Island for uh irrigating uh either agricultural crops or golf courses and there is one such facility and we've been promoting the idea of uh wanting to see water reuse embraced much much more widely on Long Island two second tangent you may know this with Dr bennington's work obviously being an expert on Long Islands hydrogeology is that you know Long Islands what is Supply uh that you depend upon for the coffee you had this morning or tea brushed your teeth showered whatever you know comes from aquafers beneath our feet and we've got 2.7 million long Islanders that live work and play over that water supply and so it's a pretty vulnerable resource and it's a real challenge to try to keep it keep it pure it's also a challenge to make sure that there's an adequate amount of water for all long Islanders so uh water reuse we believe uh is is one strategy that should be more widely employed to uh to try to meet the challenge so in 10 years when you want to make coffee that that that you had there turn on the tap you've got high quality and enough water to make that coffee you enjoy you could tell I I really would like a cup of coffee right now anyway so okay we're gonna Focus now um I can pull this out actually right and come around I think I may have to do this just to see so anyway the you can see that the title um Reflections on a transparent problem bird window strikes I'd like to characterize this issue as the most significant Wildlife problem that nobody knows anything about and you'll see the magnitude of it in a second and just by a show of hands can you tell do you do have you ever heard of the issue before about it okay how about if you haven't okay good that's you're the target audience actually those that did so um but no everybody is and uh so the this issue has been kind of bubbling more rapidly to the to the surface and more more aggressively over the past uh couple decades as more and more uh people find out about it and and really are upset by it you you see those dead birds and that's that that is put there to really demonstrate a few things one is that ites Almost Doesn't Matter What group of birds it could be a bird of pray like in a low left hand corner Cooper's hawk or it could be a a woodpecker in the upper leftand corner it could be a songbird of the the other three um they don't see windows for what they are just like we often don't you want to get um uh a little bit of a amusement tonight go into YouTube and just type in people walking into glass now we're smart right and yet we walk into glass all the time and you'll see the video after video of people that have have uh recorded that so anyway so Birds unfortunately do that uh routinely and I want to just cover that issue uh to some extent with you because of that you know is that in color are you seeing I've got bright color orange birds that are brightly colored here and that looks like it's black and white to me are you seeing black and white or color oh I was wondering if the first light is remember the little red blood dripping out of the poor Birds I can't hear you what okay um it because I I've got a a Mac um apparently the projector doesn't isn't able to translate that to color so I apologize these are really some very beautiful colorful slides um if you know your birds you know that that's a a pair of male um northern or Baltimore Orioles that are squabbling probably over territory uh somewhere in uh eastern North America and the reason I put this up was to merely suggest that you can see by the heading that birds are as Dr Bennington mentioned Birds generally are in trouble both in North America and really throughout the world and it has been pretty significantly Quantified in terms of the loss in North America to the point that a a study that came out just a couple years ago 2019 documented that we've lost three billion birds so about about one quar to onethird of the birds well that says 29% but see that range of the birds that if you had been alive in 19770 are no longer here and the causes of that decline are many and I'll go into some detail about them but again focusing on the window bird issue another important paper that frames this issue for you was a 2014 paper in The Condor the Condor and the a are the two peer-reviewed professional ornithological journals in in North America and if you're interested in Birds they just remarkable um resource for uh your use but there was an article that up here that you can see bird building Collision in the United States estimates of an immortality and species vulnerability and and they the the authors tried to really quantify I think for the first time just how big a deal is it of of birds flying into windows uh in North America and so they looked at at many different studies and that led them to a conclusion they they really couldn't quantify and say well it was exactly 462.11cfp million they they came up with a range of between 365 to 988 million Birds die every year flying into windows in uh in North America or in actually in the United States Canada's SP about on10th that uh each year and the the median being you see five of 99 so round that off to 600 million Birds uh die each year and not surprisingly given that type of impact that slide I showed you just before that about the decline again the 29% decline um makes a bit more sense so this is just a different way of saying that a little easier to read annual bird mortality resulting from window collisions is estimated to be that 365 to 988 within average 600 and here's the interesting thing when I first got involved in window bird strikes about 20 years ago I I had a misperception about the issue and M A misperception that you might have too that I thought that well it was the highrises in Manhattan you know the 50 60 story buildings that were the problem that birds migrating just didn't see the buildings and flew into them or in in the fog they would they would fly into them and that does happen but actually the overwhelming majority of uh bird strikes either occurs at your home or are lowrise you know commercial buildings like the buildings on the campus here and other college campuses and Commercial centers right down the road a little bit uh east of here on the south side of Hemstead turnpike right by the Middlebrook Parkway is that that that glass complex that's just got a a glass skin all around it and I've been told that I I I don't want to walk around it because I'm going to get too depressed but this time of year I've been told that it's it's truly a killing towers for birds flying into it so it's really the buildings that are just one two three maybe up to six stories in height that are are the ones that are problematic and highrises are relatively um you know a small contributor to the problem I'm really sorry you can't see color I've got anyway uh so if you do the math here um you'll see that this amounts on average to 1 million to 2.7 million Birds down the United States each day uh due to window collisions and given the size of New York this is where I just played a little game did did a little bit of math given the size of New York State the presence of New York City and other major Urban centers that have a lot of buildings it's reasonable to estimate that 12th of the national mortality okay uh involves birds flying at the windows in this state if we accept this assumption that means approximately 547 the 1480 Birds die in New York each and every day flying into windows and in this slide you can see um the results of uh uh Birds doing just that this is all during spring migration we're coming into spring migration now probably the highlight of a naturalist's year when Birds coming up from Central and South America many dozens of species more than a 100 will either come to Long Island to raise they're young or pass through Long Island I like to call Long Island a migratory motel for these birds as they they continue to wig North into uh New England or Southern you know Canada um and again they they make the mistake of not seeing a window for what it is and uh they pay the price in the lower right hand corner is the results of one night in Toronto Canada Toronto is where it's located right along the lake is one of the top three worst cities in North America for window bird strikes to their credit a bunch of conservationists have come together and work with government and have begun to meaningfully address the issue which I'll show you the kind of solutions a little bit later on but um so you can see the impact so the building in the upper right I don't know if anybody's familiar with Sunni Stonybrook SAS the school of marine atmospheric sciences well that's one of the Halls at uh at Stonybrook at of South Campus and you can imagine you're an oven bird or you're a black and white wobbler and you're heading right again on on migration you're going to you're going to end up raising your family in Massachusetts so you're you're passing through Long Island you're feeding actively and you're in a a tree out of view and you decide to fly into those trees that you see of course they're reflected in the window but you think those are real trees you fly into those windows and boom you either get hurt or you die we have put up many many hundreds of stickers uh on that particular uh building complex all of the South Campus we've put up actually one a thousand stickers in an effort to try to um provide what we call and this is the one take back home message I hope or takeaway message is um we you have to create visual interference the birds have to see the windows for what they are so putting up stickers or again some of these other products I'll talk about at the end is vital if you want to really begin to uh to to help solve the problem I'm really sorry it's it's the pretty pretty pretty photos on my computer um I want to make the point to you that it is a worldwide problem unfortunately it's not just a problem in North America but it's it's throughout the world and in fact I know the North American um distributor the key person for an exterior window film that they sell to corporations to uh again make their buildings bird friendly it's a product called feather friendly and I know the North American guy on it and so he I remember about seven years ago he had just come back from South Korea and had been hired to address the problem South Korea has got a unique problem with window bird strikes you know long the express way here we've got the wooden you the sound barriers you've seen perhaps the made from Woods some some places they're concrete well in South Korea they decided for better or worse to to have them all be transparent either with plastic or glass and so there are just linear miles of this seethrough wall that of course the birds don't see well so he's been he was hired and the company made good money I assume putting up just a whole stretches of this this window film again to make that the sound barriers are visible to birds there's a great spotted woodpecker in Europe and again those those are basically corollary to our our black chickies a wonderful bird we have in Long Island that's in uh in Europe called blue and and great tits oh so you can see the uh here I think I hope you'll be able to read um again the quantification about what what are the different sources of bird mortality which are the ones to really worry about which are the ones that are are less problematic well what jumps out at you I'm sure is cats free roaming pet cats and feral cats are by far the number one cause for uh bird mortality and even worse to birds it's small mammals shrews moles mice that are the base of food chains that Raptors depend upon are are killed each year in in North America and it's been a real contentious issue between uh Humane groups that are understandably concerned about the welfare of these animals uh and uh uh bird conservation organizations that are are deeply concerned about the impact those cats are having on uh on wild birds I think the place where there just FYI ripe for some compromises some U meeting ground has to do with free roaming pet cats and the story I give you um is that when I was young growing up in the Town of Smithtown my parents and our neighbors would routinely let our dog out I don't if this is something that you know older folks have some experience with but they would let the dog just go out do its business and that dog Through The Years impregnated three females I think parents would have caught on um but and then you see and you hear you the dogs getting hit by cars or just getting it to Mischief that doesn't happen really anymore people have changed their behavior about just letting the Dog go out and roam the neighborhood but we still do that with cats for some reason my hope is that through time people's values change and realize that really a cat for the benefit of the cat benefit of wildlife really should be an indoor indoor cat so the feral cat colony issue again is something that's going to be more problematic and we've been kind of loggerheads with that but anyway so so the second cause at about 600 billion you see there are windows and then a bunch of other sources of mortality all the way down to the lower right you can see wind turbines a lot of people think that wind turbines are a a problem well they are me because any bird that dies is something that we we don't want to see um and as we really um segue into meaningfully you know renewable energy and and and on Long Island most notably offshore wind this is certainly an issue of concern but by and large in terms of quantifying it not a lot of birds fly into uh into turban particularly the the real big ones that are being constructed offshore where wind turbines have been problematic there much smaller turbines landbased turbines in uh or turbines in uh in California like you've been to the Timon pass cross over that that that that was a real problem area but anyway so you this kind of gives you some sense about the range so we're going to focus again on bird strikes uh with Windows not all birds fly into windows and and there's been a number of studies that have documented uh the the the problem species and these I've tried to capture are really the uh unfortunately the the top dozen or so species that uh uh do fly into windows so white throated sparrows in the upper leftand corner the next one down is a common yellow throat with that black Bandit mask again I wish you could see they're beautiful beautiful birds they are a common breeding bird on Long Island I would not be surprised if they're in a h bird sanctuary as a breeding bird then you've got some thrushes a junko um kinglets another thrush another Kinglet um and then a a few uh other wobblers another Sparrow a catb bird which is on the right hand side in the middle and right below that is a a a funny looking shorebird that is called the American Woodcock and Dr Bennington was mentioning about a woodcock flying into the windows here at one time they are a common uh uh window bird strike victim um for for because the fact that they they don't really fly along the shore and and stay away from buildings but they they do uh um frequent um up habitats where there might be development well not all um birds that fly into windows die or at least die immediately so that's a bit of little bit of good news and you can see the that's a female Golden Crown kinglet with a Golden Crown that you can't enjoy in the upper leftand corner and she's stunned she probably has a concussion she flew into the window and is falling down in a crack and hopefully she will recover of course a lot of birds get predated at that point that they cannot protect or defend themselves uh or flee um and so they they they could be easily killed that that that bird in in a photo at the bottom it's the same bird and that's a bird that I came across when I was putting up the stickers at Sunni Stoneybrook the south campus I mentioned I showed you the one building that's a female common yellow throat again I showed you the male with the black Bandit mask just before that's a female and I came across her she'd flown into a window you look at her eyes you can see her eyes are closed she's Rock she was rocking back and forth clearly um under trauma and we wanted to finish putting up the window stickers on campus so I got a cardboard box and just put it over her quieted her down for about and we came back in about an hour 15 minutes hour and a half later after we finish for the day and I took off the cardboard box and you see her alertness to the right and she took right off fine so I think she I think she will be okay if a bird hits a window kind of at an at an angle they tend to to do better if they hit it straight on it it's usually more of a more severe the outcome well if you if any of you have taken orthology learned about of course feathers would be one of the uh subject matters you'd learn more about used to have the pleasure of teaching onthology and always got a kick of covering feathers with students and taking out microscopes and looking at the you know the structure of the micr structure of feathers fascinating just absolutely fascinating uh objects anyway many birds people don't realize this so this just interesting athology here many many birds have um f that intentionally disintegrate and they become basically talcum powder so analogous to our talcum powder user and they Birds use that to help waterproof themselves and just that they pin a lot right they clean their feathers so that it's called powder down so when a bird flies into a window at 30 miles an hour all that down comes out it's just like if you were to take a sock filled with flour and smack it against the window you'd have an impression that's what you're seeing so th those are three different bird strikes of morning doves and and owls that have flown into Windows um and that's that's the powdered down impression that's left behind Okay so what are the what are the two um problematic characteristics of Windows well that again they're in the title of the dark Reflections on a transparent problem it's their reflectivity and and or their transparency t typically um they're mutually exclusive so when a window's got a strong reflection you really can't see through it but if if it's a window at the time of day and depending on the incidence of the sunlight let's say these windows right here to your right were wide open and this was room and then I was a whole Bank of another windows and I was out you know the outdoors just to the other side of those windows and sometime a day there'd be a transparency issues and so birds like thrushes love to fly through because they fly through the forest they try to fly through this and and so transparency could be an issue but anyway probably the bigger issue of the two is again the reflective quality of Windows and you can see they're in both commercial settings and Commercial uh commercial settings and residential settings around your house there's a female cardinal that died flying into somebody's reflective patio door window and then you can you can see again you can imagine just how um the uh these commercial would be a problem that that photograph in the upper right hand corner is taken not too far from here if if you head West on the expressway get off at Community Drive let's say you have to get stitches at the hospital for some weird reason you know NorthShore Hospital down you go down that hill on your right hand side is the big hospital complex the first building you pass is the northwell building that building is very problematic for window birn strikes and we've been working with the um their main sustainability per um individual at northwell to to put up exterior window film on the back side of the building that borders against a uh really important uh property the green tree uh State um in um in Manhasset again so transparency against the other other issue and you see how a bird could could fly try to go right through that bus stop shelter windows or that in the house in the upper left in the upper in in a lower right what a house that is huh um and then uh that upper right is a photo I took that's against Stone Brook University where about 40 Birds died a flock of grackles black birds uh just tried to fly through again they thought they could fly through right to the other side to go feed on the grass they they like to feed in Open Fields so they attempted to fly through to the administration's credit they then put up these stickers to try to uh provide visual interference again and I will stress here that the design they put the looks like birds of prey stickers that's really not what's important what's important is those stickers are a signal or a cue to the birds that something's there something you know and and so they they will not not fly into it and the more stickers the better or the more visual the greater or more extensive the visual interference the better okay so now you're all depressed and you H can't believe this another issue that that's uh affecting Wildlife on the planet throw up your hands and give up and I'd say well please don't do that um please stay actively engaged in caring about the only planet that is habitable that we know about in the universe and um do what you can to to make it a better place and so a lot of companies have responded with various solutions to uh address the issue I just want to run through some of them and I've got some products up here on the chair here I could point out as well at the end before I do that let me just quickly point out that um about 15 years ago a couple organizations The National autobond Society and most notably the American bird Conservancy really started taking on this issue in a meaningful way as advocates they wanted a response from you know from Congress they want a response from State legislatures they want a response from local Town boards and Village boards to to respond to it and so they came up with a maybe 75 page um bird safe building design manual I will not quiz you at the end there's no quiz today you know but I would encourage you if you're interested in a topic to just go online type that in and Google and this this manual will come up and it's got a lot of fascinating information in it but the notable thing really is that it says that the first six stories of the building or the problem Windows because that's where you've got trees and other vegetation that's reflected right once you get about that like the skyscrapers in New York City it's either reflecting to the sky or reflecting some other buildings and so it's not as as a problem birds are attracted to vegetation because what's in vegetation food the insects or the berries that they depend upon to survive right so so it's really if you can make the first even a taller building if you can make the first three four five six stories um more friendly for birds in terms of making those windows visible you've really taken a major step forward again so this is distilling a 75 page document in just those uh two uh two sentences at the bottom but and here's a a fascinating fascinating work um so if you you imagine 15 years ago kind of a weird way to think about this but 15 years ago you've been hired by the American bird Conservancy start we got to start addressing this issue we got to start um bringing bird collisions down to zero I'm very much of an activist an advocate I'm thinking okay well I would s if I was hired by ABC to go to Congress and go to again right State Legislature go go to the local state senate everyone ask them to put a legislation they didn't do that at all and they had much better better ideas smarter ideas said well if we're going to come up with um an answers um we I we have to provide answers to this problem so those answers have to be products they have to be Solutions right so so what Christine Dr Christine Shepard um working and also Dr Clen at mberg college and Christine's with ABC they built this um tunnel and this tunnel's longer than you think it's a little bit compressed view in the upper right kind a little bit hard to see but that tunnels bifurcated down the middle and on one side at the end is a window and on the other side is a window but with some treatment in front of it she let a bird go indigo bunting or a common yellow throat and let it fly towards the uh you know those those windows the the extent to which that bird would avoid the the the window product you know Channel which tell her how effective that that product was so the bird would fly towards the window pane keep none of the birds died they were they had they had soft netting basically if you know what Mis Nets are for capturing birds that you know a lot of uh uh researchers will will intentionally you know collect Birds to to put tags on them or satellite whatever to to try to monitor monitor them for some reason anyway they they there was netting in front so the birds didn't get harmed but she was able to come up with a a a a a measure or kind of indices for how effective these different products were and and so the companies were kind of tripping over themselves well we want to get tested and get get the Good oldfashioned Good Housekeeping seal of approval they wanted to be able to get that and so that's what uh they she did she's done and still does to this day um and there there's a whole rating and and kind of factors that go into it so what are some of those um products well frosted and fritted glass is extremely effective I mean you particularly frosted glass you sometimes see you know windows that are frosted you can't see in them they're translucent but not transparent right so you um they let it light but you really can't see an image on the other side although You' imagine like in the upper right hand corner there that would be highly effective at preventing Birds because a bird sees again uh the window for what it is because visual interference right um in the lower right those are dots in that window that are about every two inches both horizontally and vertically that is about the spacing you want and that is fritted glass that's glass that's actually been manufactured to actually have e either ceramic beads put on it or more typically just drilled out very shallow spots drilled in the glass that that creates that um those dots and they they do that you know easily with the equipment they have and uh that's also very effective and then and you see that's also again get another Fred glass to the lower left and then what different you can you can't really see but colored frosted glass in the upper upper left one of the fascinating aspects about this whole issue has to do with UV ultraviolet light we although I just reading as some evidence that maybe some people can actually see that the edge of UV now this is kind of new thinking but anyway I grew up learning that that humans cannot see ultraviolet light a lot of animals can a lot of bird species can they've got we have three color cones in our eyes you know you got you learn this you got cones and rods in your eyes the the cones are for color the rods are for light intensity and so you we can see blue yellow and red well birds have that fourth color cone that can see UV many not all birds so anyway the thinking is the Holy Grail of of this problem you know solving this problem is well if we can come up with a UV uh pattern with glass it doesn't affect our aesthetic appreciation of glass like the fritted dot do or other things but the birds are still warned and that's that's kind of showing what the birds see is UV glass and the major company is a company called ux out of Germany that's been manufacturing this they've put these windows in have anybody been to the Jones Beach nature and energy center on the West End we advocated C that they they addressed the issue they did when they built that Center the problem was that the birds that are migrating there apparently don't see UV as well and so they've been they still had bird strike problems they've now put in the exterior window film and it pretty much have solved it from what I understand so but but UV could be part of the answer you you know UV reflective glass could be part of the answer down the road and here's just again exterior window film this is just an adhesive film that gets uh squeegee onto the windows by professionals and has different patterns again horizontal lines vertical lines or the dot matrix all again creating a term you you're getting annoyed that I'm saying again but visual interference okay Collide Escape is another product you see that there's no burden in it's right mind that's going to fly into that that picture windows of that house in fact what Collide Escape is if you you have you seen been in New York City you see buses that have the advertisements on the front on the windows and everything on and you can't see people on the bus D you know go along but if you're in the bus you can see out that's what Collide Collide Escape is and there are some companies and some settings where Collide escapees been used quite effectively for example National Wildlife refuges the US Fisher Wildlife service has used colitis Escape because they really want to make sure that the Nature Center you're going to to learn about birds isn't the source of bird deaths so and then tape decals you see screens netting and string can all be effective to some degree again the um trying to see that you can why you can see it but um I don't really see any any good decals dep we put up a lot of you know 4 in or 2in uh decals uh sometimes static cling sometimes with an adhesive that uh uh can be applied to the window to again allow for the birds to see them but they are that that tape in the up leftand corner is a product that's adhesive you just put it uh on the uh the window vertically and if it's only spaced I'm going have to show that in a second uh really no more than about 4 inches apart it it usually provides adequate um again visual interference for the birds screens are quite effective if you've got windows at home with screens on them I'd be shocked if you ever have an issue with birds flying into them because the the screen just breaks up the the reflectivity and and the transparency pretty well so here's the rule again Christine Shepard's work when she was look look at these products really found that that um Birds had to have um windows with uh just this 2in distance um horizontally and 4 in vertically for them to to be effective for the birds to try to avoid flying into them and again fly towards that one open window in that in that that tunnel that I the wooden tunnel I showed you before with hummingbirds it's really 2 inches by two inches hummingbirds I didn't show ruby throated hummingbirds unfortunately are common window bird strike victims one of the probably like 13th or 14th a lot of unfortunately a lot of hummingbirds s flying into because particularly because hummingbirds are really fast if You' ever watched hummingbirds they really move pretty fast and then you could do exterior elements if any of you go on to a career in architecture become an architect I hope you'll consider trying to make sure that that facade you the front of the building is not not transparent it's not reflective but you you can build it elements to make it again create the visual interference that allow Birds to see the windows for what they are you can see in the upper right the New York Times building in the city they had a problem so what was their response they dropped this kind of metal mesh over there and let the whole world know this is the New York Times building by putting that there and that eliminated the the problem that they had so what doesn't work so well is uh uh just you know single window stickers if you got a a picture window and you put up just one sticker in the middle you know 2 in by 2 in it's probably not going to be effective is it better than nothing absolutely I'd encourage you if you have just to put up one but two is better than one three is better than two four is better than three so as many as you can put up that that does don't bother you that's great I have I've had uh two bird strikes on my house since we moved into this house in stet since 2016 and I've put up uh on the two large Windows uh I've got 12 stickers on each one and does it it does a little bit but but I I've got the Peace of Mind knowing it's over my my concern for the birds overrides the aesthetic impacts and and uh knowing that uh there's no real likelihood that any bird and no birds have flown into those two big picture windows since they put those stickers up so um any the other things are not really again it's all about creating enough of a uh interference for the birds to see for what they are noise does not work plastic owls doesn't work there's a building in Great Neck a very maybe the most problematic building on Old Long Island just by the railroad tracks on the west side of Great Neck Road we've met with the owners about that um to bring it to your attention dozens of birds die each spring and fall migration particularly fall migration it's been mostly kinglets those the two species that you saw before Golden Crown kinglets or Ruby CR kinglets anyway they they hired a company 15 years ago to address the problem the company said put plastic owls up on top of the paret at the top what a waste of money absolute waste of money because it that's not that's not the going to solve anything you you gota got to treat the windows okay so now um getting to the end here the uh uh other side kind of of the of the uh uh window bird strike issue is is really has to do with the ambient light that we have in major metropolitan areas throughout the world but in United States or near we are of course we've got New York City you've got Boston you got Philly um again Toronto I mentioned before and this glow that is caused or created by the collective lights um has Works to to Really attract birds birds could be attracted to light the way moths are and with with really catastrophic results because that those lights are in dense Urban centers that during the day then once the lights go off the birds are trapped in places with a lot of glass and so there's this whole effort you may know or hear about called lights out we're trying and and then we're aligned with the dark whole Dark Skies program there's a whole movement of foot you may know about the international dark sky Association we're losing our ability to see the constellations the planets and the Milky Way and I could say that for a fact again being a little bit older I remember on Long Island when I was younger again 1960s I could I could see the Milky Way better than can today and that's a loss affects the quality of all our lives not to be able to connect connected to the larger universe and to wonder about our you know our place in it if we just look up and just see a glow you so anyway um there is a real effort about dealing with this issue there's legislation at the state level that's being considered this legislative session and relating to this about lights again birds being attracted to lights unfortunately you know each each September 11th there's a a service in in Manhattan to commemorate or to to recognize that sh that those individuals that unfortunately were lost on 911 and so they have these two pillars of light incredibly strong laser you know but not laser but beams that that shoot upwards those white dashes you see those are birds they're attracted to it so New York City aabon has worked out with them that when the birds reach a certain concentration they shut the lights down let the birds dispersed they're no longer mesmerized they'll move off in a couple minutes and then they'll throw the lights back on so again just underscoring how birds really can be attracted to light uh to their uh their detriment government has responded and is responding so New York City that's again a dead male common yellow throat right there on the sidewalk flew into a a building a window in New York City New York City just a couple years ago passed u a a new law that mandates that any new buildings or significant retrofits or you know reconstruction of existing buildings has to by law incorporate bird friendly building design a major step forward in in the issue Toronto has done the same a number of cities in Cal Oakland has done the same Santa Clara in California there's about a dozen cities in California alone with a shall we say a bit more Progressive on these issues have done the same um we I I again wearing my SEO hat I lo lobbied extensively the central Pine Barons commission which is the commission that overseas the the pine Barons we Dr benon mentioned about my involed with the pine Barons and there is a compatible growth area where limited development can occur so if there's any development that's going to occur there that has to now incorporate bird friendly building design we just got that an amendment to the the comprehensive plan in the pine Barons just last year so that which is a good thing so it's happening all all over now and you may have heard about that famous owl in New York City Flaco from Europe with somebody I think intentionally released the owl um and it was able to survive for more than a year uh flying around Central Park and then left Central Park and expanded its range and but unfortunately recently died I believe flying into a window or flying into a building um anyway this legislation called feather lives also account flacko uh formerly called the bird safe building act legislation in the New York State Assembly and Senate to uh um uh deal with the issue and if this legislation passes it'll basically do um to New York state owned and leased buildings what the New York city ordinance has done so if you want to get involved no harm in you writing to you whoever represents you in the state legislature those of you that are you know New York State residents to let them know you strongly support the passage of this bill and I'm happy to talk with you afterwards if want want more information about that so for more information on the whole topic I would I would encourage you to go into um these websites like New York City autobond or you could also go into National autobond um the American bird Conservancy ww abc.org wonderful stuff and then flap that's the Fatal lights awareness program that's the the group The conservationists in Toronto I mentioned before that were really the first group of people that took the bull by the horns that started working on it and turned Toronto around from being a killing field to to many of the buildings being burnt bird friendly also if you want to learn more about it um there's a this Daniel Clen I mentioned before professor at mberg um College one of the real pioneers of researching this topic um he has a a thin book maybe 120 130 page it's called solid air that's very very informative about about this issue if you're you're so inclined so the hope the message to you is that uh working together we've already made great progress but there's much much much much more progress that needs to be made just think about all the existing buildings like maybe buildings on the hopster campus that may be problematic killing birds I don't know I don't know to what what extent it is an issue I know with I I have done a work with ad Deli and with ad Delphi has got some problems again I mentioned Stonybrook university has definitely got problems Sunni Old Westbury I've checked out with this Sunni Old Westbury seems to be okay just the nature of the buildings they don't have a lot of what we call Glass skin buildings they've got I guess older buildings with a lot more you know Concrete and brick and and so forth so anyway so that's it um and let me just quickly show you a couple of uh products and this is just the the bird tape I've got a a roll of it and it's just so easy to apply you cut it into sections take off the the uh you know the the back of it and just apply it to Windows done this again I want to say now Collective thousands of times on Windows around Long Island and then there are two other products this is a product called window alert um these are static cling they're not adhesive but these go on the outside they reflect UV light um the good that's the good news the bad news is they just they don't last they only last three four five years until the elements you know the weather kind of deteriorates then and then another product which is called a Bird's I view is a larger decal the good news about this is a it reflects UV light and B goes out the inside so what does that mean that means you could put this on second third fourth F fifth Story where Birds might uh fly in um that you can't get access to from the outside so this called a bird's eyee view um so that's really it and I'm happy to entertain any comments questions criticisms what have you and thank you for your [Music] interest hi uh first thank you so much for the uh for the presentation a question I had was in regards to like geese like I work at rosfield mall and there's like always geese like crossing the road like what are like preventive measures we can take because I know like at the mall especially like during like Black Friday like we we there may have been like maybe four or five like Geeks that were killed just how they um by traffic or by like um there's a bridge that like um that connects like the parking lot to um the the mall and like I guess one of them like ran into like the bushes or something and like that was it for it whole is of the the other issue with one of the things about geese is they're they're grazers right so what's often attracting them is is uh grass so grassy medians along roads and things and if we could replace the grass with a different kind of vegetation like wild flowers or something the geese would not be congregating there so much anymore that's why they pay me the big money uh questions anybody else question uh thank you for coming to speak with us today I was just uh wondering what is some like ways we can mitigate the effect that cats have against birds like besides just like I guess and iing cats yeah the cat the cat problem really is very the magnitude of it's really quite quite significant I would again I would encourage people to start to kind of do what it recommended with regard to pet cats is begin to change mindset I know it's hard if you've got a a pet cat that you know it's 12 years old now it's been going Outdoors for 12 years you're not trying to make an indoor cat's like next to impossible so but the next cat you get making an indoor cat from the get-go and it's ways to make you to provide access to the outside I mean if you go online you see all these neat um you know uh what do you call them um one one call it like cattle like cattle cattle um panels you know where you you can uh provide them some uh access to the outside but but they're constrained anyway the issue about not having Youth um it's really tough that there's been a lot of focus on what we call TNR which is trap Nea release um that is if you got these feral cat colonies people trap up the cats they then bring them into a veterinarian's office they neuter them so they can't reproduce and then they release them back the problem is that releasing them back they continue to wreak havoc on small mammals and and birds so I think it I think you got to try to do TNA trap new or adopt and I know that may be a little bit naive given the number I mean the number of of feral cats uh that have thought in the United States is several hundred million of them so it's a Monumental problem in terms of its of its magnitude but but I think that's what we have to do I think we've got a more responsibility you know cats are not part of the North American ecosystem I Bobcats are and links are but but I mean you know the the domestic cat is not and given the number of them if we release them you make decision to release them after you've Ned them I think that uh that's that's I don't know getting my high horse morally I think that's that's the wrong thing to do I think once you've got them in captivity you've neutered them you need to keep them there where they they belong and without the possibility of creating harm to again these other wild animals that do depend upon natural settings to to survive so but it's a tough I will say it is a really really tough problem I I used to work again work full whole time for the town of Brook Haven I used to run the environmental program for the town and one of the issues that I worked on was work trying to trying to bring down the feral cat colonies we were actually under a mandate with the US fish and wildlife service because we had piping plover predation a Fally threatened species and we were faced with with significant $20,000 a day fines by the fish and wildlife service because of feral cat colonies that had been established in some of our Coastal beaches so it's a it's a a real a real difficult problem for which there's no easy answer but but the some things we can do I think particularly again with with pet cats so it's a problem on the Hoster campus we have a pretty good colony of feral cats at hastra the hastra cats it's like one of the things about hastra what another um but our our bird sanctuary is is also a cat sanctuary and I every time I see a a dead animal that's been predated by cats I take a picture of it to kind of keep a record and um it's a it's definitely a problem but it's it's hard to say what to do about it any other questions anybody can I just I'm G to throw one more thing in that is with some emails with Dr Bennington um Dr Russell Burke um here I think expressed some interest I think working with Dr Bennington to um undertake a an effort to try to quantify the impact of bird strikes on campus this has been done by a lot of students college students that are motivated you want to do something to help help the environment help you know the wildlife is to is to be part of that process the model I always use is Duke University just going to you know again Google Duke University uh you know bird strike issue something you'll see what they've done they're done they're done it Duke they did this about 10 years ago the students really highly motivated students they pushed back at the administration and of course that first didn't want to do anything they said no you're going to do something about it and they they did they identified five I think it was five problem I buildings and and got results after they did all this you know monitoring to document the the occurrence so if you go into that you'll see um the the the monitoring protocol that they used and you if you're interested working with with Dr Ben and and Dr Burke you can uh perhaps do it is happening there's also interested at now doing this at stoneberg University with one of the professors there so it's which is great news because it's good learning too right it's a learning a scientific method and anyway yeah so Russ Burke in biology is uh planning on uh starting a study right we want to figure out do we have a problem and and how big it is how how big is it so uh and we'll we'll have the support of the grounds Department right because those are the guys that are cleaning up around the buildings all the time and and they'll you know they know they know right yeah so um yeah so if anybody's interested in in becoming involved in this uh just uh email either Russ Russ Burke in the biology department or email me and uh I will put you in touch and feel free to reach out to me if you have any questions comments whatever you you know you're having lunch in a little while dinner tonight say ah it's just J Turner at c.org happy to chat with you about uh this issue or other conservation issues Wildlife Conservation issues again I barely scratched the surfice on things we're working on uh on log Island to try to further uh the welfare of wild animals so happy to have a continuing dialogue with you all right uh let give John a final round of applause here thanks everybody for coming

Channel: Hofstra University

Views: 121

Keywords: Hofstra, University

Id: jyIH54RODVc

Length: 62min 9sec (3729 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 23 2024