This is not the post I had planned on writing today. I had actually intended on posting about the tomato leaf roll I’ve been battling that was obvious in one of the pics I used in my introductory post.
But something happened to me today at work that broke my heart, that I want to talk about instead. This post is not going to be for everybody. There’s a possibility that this post could be disturbing or upsetting for some. CONTENT WARNING - Next image is graphic, shows a dead animal. (I reused the pic above so the graphic pic wouldn't be the thumbnail pic for the post). Fair warning.
So we all know that birds kind of have this really bad habit of flying into windows, and that it tends to break their necks when they do so. It's kind of common knowledge that this is a problem, and most of us have probably seen at least one victim at some point. It's estimated that over 950M birds die each year in the US as a result of colliding with a building. 44% of those deaths are occurring at residences. The most commonly killed species are all small birds like Sparrows, Ovenbirds, Juncos, Warblers, Thrush, etc. But, as I personally discovered today, the damage isn't just being done to small birds, even if those are the most common victims.
As you may have already deduced, I discovered one of the less common victims at work today. One of the coolest things about my job is that I get to be outside, in nature, pretty much all day. The private estate I work on is located just outside of the city I live in and we actually have a wide diversity of wildlife, which I will discuss in later postings. But my favorites are the peregrine falcons. They are really cool birds. I actually thought there was only one or two in the area originally. Then one morning there was this raucous murder of crows hanging out in some of the trees near the garden. They were being unusually noisy, for an extended period of time, which caught my attention. After about 10 mins, I started hearing falcon calls. 8-10 peregrine falcons came flying in from all directions and converged on the crows. The two groups of birds proceeded to have an all out battle for a good half hour after that, with the falcons eventually chasing the crows off. It was a really amazing thing to witness. They sit and watch me from the trees while I work, which they didn't do originally. I've grown rather fond of them. So I was dismayed to discover the following at work this morning.
One of the bad things about my job, is that it's my responsibility to deal with things like this. Normally we would take the dead critters off to the outskirts of the property and just leave them in the undergrowth. That just didn't feel right this time. This falcon deserved better than being tossed in the underbrush. I ended up burying it the best I could, crying the whole time.
One of the factors that played into this particular incident, is the large, super clean window. Which is basically half of the house. It's kind of like a giant fishbowl in some aspects, so I try to not take pics of the house in order to give the owner more privacy.
What can you do to help prevent bird deaths if you have large windows? Well there are several options, from bird safety films to decals to tape. It really just depends on your budget and what you're willing to deal with aesthetically.
I promise this type of thing is not going to be the majority of my posts. I just was bound and determined that I was going to have a good day today despite the fact that my fibromyalgia is flared up and my back muscles are having a conniption fit, and then I made this gruesome discovery and it just completely ruined my day. I felt compelled to talk about it, maybe bring some awareness to others. Bird deaths due to building collisions aren’t really something we think much about until we unwittingly discover a victim. Which when it’s one of the smaller bird species, most of us are kind of rather indifferent to it. Or we feel bad, but generally forget it about it shortly after disposing of the remains. Humans as a species really are destructive to other species without even really thinking about it.
I used this link for information for this post.
If you're interested in looking into the prevention options available, this link may be helpful.
If you've had a similar experience, have used any of the prevention methods, or if you have your own method that you've found works, please share them in the comments below.
Thanks for stopping by my post. I think I’m going to go do a post about flowers now. Something not all morbid and depressing and that is more in keeping with the majority of content I intend to create here.
I haven't seen very many birds that ran into a window and died. Most of the dead birds that I've seen were killed by getting hit by a car or truck. Where I live, wild turkeys are a hazard in the late spring. I've seen a few dead crows, killed when they took off into the path of a car, and even a large owl one morning. It was dead when I came upon it, as were the others. I carried the owl off the road and into the ditch so it wouldn't get run over any more. I used to collect the wing and tail feathers from the dead turkeys for making arrows. I always carried the turkey off the road and across the ditch, so the scavengers wouldn't get hit while cleaning up the mess, and I always gave an offering to the bird Gods for the gift of the feathers.
I hadn't really seen many myself until I started working in landscape maintenance. I spent four years before the private estate working as an assistant ornamentalist at a premier private golf course in a gated community. We actually handled a lot of the maintenance around the houses in one particular section of the community as well as around the clubhouse. These were big houses, like multi million dollar homes, and many of them had massive windows. On smaller houses with smaller windows, screens are usually being used and/or the windows actually have muntin bars, both of which help to prevent the birds from running into those windows. On those larger windows, they're generally just a single, massive sheet of glass with no screen and no muntin bars, so it's hard for the birds to actually be able to tell that there's something there. I've seen dozens upon dozens of smaller birds like sparrows and thrushes that have been killed via building collision over the last 6-7 years. Almost exclusively around those massive houses with the large windows. Although I've seen a few that were taken out by sliding glass doors on smaller houses as well. This was the first time I've seen a larger bird fall victim to this.
Omg, the dead owl probably would have made me cry too. There's just something so majestic and regal about the birds of prey that almost kind of demands a certain level of respect. Kudos for moving the poor thing. Just seems so disrespectful when we essentially desecrate their corpses after killing them.
Nooooooo!