Winnipeg Construction XI

[James Bond Agent 007]

Originally Posted by trueviking

It is really expensive and pretty obtrusive.

Seems weird to require it on big streets and downtown. My guess is there are far fewer birds there than in neighbourhoods.

Not all of them are intrusive, it depends on the pattern you use.

I put some on one of my kitchen windows several years ago and they absolutely work. It's even one of the more intrusive patterns but it's not really that bad.

And no it's not that expensive. And even if it was, it would be worth it. In the US, window collisions kill a billion birds a year.

A Simple Window Treatment Drastically Cuts Bird Collisions at a Chicago Landmark

On a warm morning this past October, Dave Willard, the re­tired bird collections manager for Chicago’s Field Museum of Natural History, walked briskly along a glassy façade on the Lake Michigan shoreline looking for fallen birds. The building made of glass is McCormick Place, the convention center infamous to birders as the place where nearly 1,000 migrating birds met their deaths on Oct. 5, 2023.

Willard has taken walks like this on nearly every morning during migration seasons for the last 40 years, document­ing birds that crash into the building’s windows. He typically collects nearly 1,000 dead birds at McCormick Place over the course of a year, with most mortalities coming during fall migra­tion. This past autumn, however, Wil­lard says he found only 48 dead birds.

The difference appears to be the tiny white circles spaced every two inches along the entirety of McCormick Place’s 120,000 square feet of glassy surface. The markers were applied as part of a $1.2 million project last summer con­ducted by the Metropolitan Pier and Exposition Authority, which owns and operates McCormick Place, to avoid another avian catastrophe.

[Hecate]

Yea overturning this is dumb.

You’d think designers would be advocating for design that creates better spaces for all species. We have to coexist.

Nobody likes cleaning up dead birds.

[trueviking]

if most of the birds are hitting houses, and we really care about birds, shouldn't the priority be to get houseowners to add dots to all of their windows? Maybe make it a bylaw for new houses and an awareness/incentive program for existing?

I don't really see the advantage of adding yet another financial barrier to multi-family housing development.....

do we really want to look through all of our windows with dots all over them?

[bomberjet]

The sparrows slam into my front window, and less extent my back kitchen window, every spring. For the most part they fly away after some time.

[James Bond Agent 007]

Originally Posted by trueviking

if most of the birds are hitting houses, and we really care about birds, shouldn't the priority be to get houseowners to add dots to all of their windows? Maybe make it a bylaw for new houses and an awareness/incentive program for existing?

I don't really see the advantage of adding yet another financial barrier to multi-family housing development.....

do we really want to look through all of our windows with dots all over them?

I have a bird screen over my kitchen window, and it's not that big a deal. In fact it's kinda neat because I can look out my window at my bird feeders (which are just feet away from the window) without scaring the birds away, because they can't really see through the screen.

A minor inconvenience in looking out your window is a more than reasonable sacrifice to save the lives of thousands of birds.

When I first moved into my current house I regularly got birds slamming into my kitchen window. Some of them were pretty loud. THUD!! I had to give a couple of them mercy killings. The last straw was when a hummingbird hit the window very hard, and I rushed outside and there was a hummingbird on my patio beneath the window frantically flapping its wings clearly in great pain. I grabbed a shovel and gave it a mercy killing.

I then Googled "birds hitting window" and came across this:
https://www.collidescape.org/
You can order it online, give them the dimensions of your window and they send it to you custom cut in a roll.

I believe these regulations focus on commercial buildings because they tend to have large window areas and affect birds disproportionately (see previously posted article about the Chicago Convention Center). I agree a lot of houses should also probably have them installed, especially since so many houses these days have large windows, but for the time being that's probably more of a public education issue.

When I was in Winnipeg in August I saw a dead bird that had hit a window at the airport. Was very sad. Buildings like that are absolutely the type they should put window treatings over.

Your perfectly unobstructed view out your window is not more important than the lives of millions of birds.

[James Bond Agent 007]

Originally Posted by bomberjet

The sparrows slam into my front window, and less extent my back kitchen window, every spring. For the most part they fly away after some time.

Probably a lot of those birds had severe concussions and will suffer a lifetime of neurological issues.

[trueviking]

Originally Posted by James Bond Agent 007

I have a bird screen over my kitchen window, and it's not that big a deal. In fact it's kinda neat because I can look out my window at my bird feeders (which are just feet away from the window) without scaring the birds away, because they can't really see through the screen.

A minor inconvenience in looking out your window is a more than reasonable sacrifice to save the lives of thousands of birds.

When I first moved into my current house I regularly got birds slamming into my kitchen window. Some of them were pretty loud. THUD!! I had to give a couple of them mercy killings. The last straw was when a hummingbird hit the window very hard, and I rushed outside and there was a hummingbird on my patio beneath the window frantically flapping its wings clearly in great pain. I grabbed a shovel and gave it a mercy killing.

I then Googled "birds hitting window" and came across this:
https://www.collidescape.org/
You can order it online, give them the dimensions of your window and they send it to you custom cut in a roll.

I believe these regulations focus on commercial buildings because they tend to have large window areas and affect birds disproportionately (see previously posted article about the Chicago Convention Center). I agree a lot of houses should also probably have them installed, especially since so many houses these days have large windows, but for the time being that's probably more of a public education issue.

When I was in Winnipeg in August I saw a dead bird that had hit a window at the airport. Was very sad. Buildings like that are absolutely the type they should put window treatings over.

Your perfectly unobstructed view out your window is not more important than the lives of millions of birds.

to be clear....it's the unobstructed view of hundreds of millions of people affecting that many birds....i actually think if we covered all our windows with opaque dots, people would react pretty negatively. I've been in buildings with bird glass and its distracting.

the article says that the majority of birds are hitting houses....which makes sense since they are surrounded by grass and trees....should focus on houses.

[James Bond Agent 007]

Originally Posted by trueviking

to be clear....it's the unobstructed view of hundreds of millions of people affecting that many birds....i actually think if we covered all our windows with opaque dots, people would react pretty negatively. I've been in buildings with bird glass and its distracting.

Again, your distraction is not more important than the lives of millions of birds.

[trueviking]

To me, this is just another ‘let’s download our problems on to renters because I’m not one’. If we care about birds so much, force people who live in houses, where most birds die, to obscure all their windows.

I can guarantee that would go over like a lead balloon. Not only because of cost, but also look and function.

I appreciate that you walk the walk and do have bird glass on your house. Anyone who thinks its a good idea to force housing developers to incur the cost had better also have made that investment on their own home or they are hypocrites.

[WinCitySparky]

No one looks out their windows anymore cmon guys, the window is now in your pocket, get with the times

[trueviking]

Originally Posted by James Bond Agent 007

Again, your distraction is not more important than the lives of millions of birds.

I can make the same type of blanket argument. Housing is a human right. We can’t be adding impediments to its construction and affordability to save some birds.

[trueviking]

Originally Posted by WinCitySparky

No one looks out their windows anymore cmon guys, the window is now in your pocket, get with the times

Truth. Hopefully birds don’t start flying into phones or we are all screwed.

[James Bond Agent 007]

It's really sad some people think it's OK for a billion birds to get killed every year just because preventing that would create a bit of an obstruction on the view out their windows. What a sickeningly selfish attitude.

I mean, most of these same people already have screens over some of their windows to prevent flies from coming in when they open them, but god forbid they add what is no more distracting than a fly screen over the other windows too.

[James Bond Agent 007]

Originally Posted by trueviking

I can make the same type of blanket argument. Housing is a human right. We can’t be adding impediments to its construction and affordability to save some birds.

What a dumb argument. These screens and coatings are not terribly expensive.

I could just as easily say why do we let builders add expensive marble kitchen countertops, luxury bathroom fixtures and 3-car-garages? Those reduce affordability as well.

And expensive marble kitchen countertops, luxury bathroom fixtures and 3-car-garages don't save the lives of wildlife either.

[Mr Tall Forehead]

I think I found a compromise guys.

[optimusREIM]

What’s crazy to me is there are people out here saying that the birds are more important than people………..

[James Bond Agent 007]

Originally Posted by optimusREIM

What’s crazy to me is there are people out here saying that the birds are more important than people………..

Putting coatings over windows to protect birds does nothing to harm people.

[optimusREIM]

Originally Posted by James Bond Agent 007

Putting coatings over windows to protect birds does nothing to harm people.

Right right, except it’s yet another layer of bureaucracy that adds cost and complexity to any build, and instead of saying gee maybe we shouldn’t make building more difficult in the middle of a housing crisis - no matter how trivial you may feel this impediment to be.

[James Bond Agent 007]

They already have it in Toronto:
https://www.toronto.ca/city-government/p...ign-guidelines/bird-friendly-guidelines/

[Hecate]

One of the big reasons birds die in so many house window collisions is because of 🞵🞵🞵🞵🞵🞵 design. My neighbours just built a house and you can see through it. Probably two thirds of the houses down my road have elements where you can see through the front out to the back. 🞵🞵🞵🞵🞵🞵 design like this shouldn’t be allowed.

Glass towers that are see through have been known to take out entire flocks of birds.

Be better designers. It’s literally your job.