STOP THE DEATH OF BIRDS CRASHING INTO PANES!At least 250000 birds die each day from crashing into window panes or similar obstacles -often unnoticed by us human beings. A lot of them aren’t dead at once but die from internalinjuries later on. Then cats or other animals of prey eat the victims. What is more, during thehatching season the brood of these injured birds will starve to death as well. At least 70 birdspecies are affected, from barn owl and kingfisher to sparrow hawk and yellowhammer.Unfortunately, the well-known black silhouettes of birds of prey are useless. Birds do notrecognise non-moving silhouettes as a source of danger but only as an obstacle. They makeway for these obstacles and thus crash into the pane of glass next to them. If pinned up frominside, the silhouette will even not be recognisable as an obstacle if the window reflects.In 1996 already, I suggested a completely new approach to solving this problem, and from1999 onwards I have explained it in detail together with Martin Regner (see "Vogel undUmwelt" volume 13, publications in part 1, p. 31 - 41, Aug. 2002). Our idea is to mark paneswith patterns that warn birds but are invisible to human beings. Since birds are able to seeultraviolet light - which we cannot - we should succeed by using patterns that are only visiblein ultraviolet-light. For further information look up
www.spinnennetz-effekt.de in the internet.Appropriate commercial products aren't available yet, but luckily there is a simple method ofpreventing the death of birds crashing into window panes: Just don’t clean your windows onthe outside anymore. And if you do clean them, dab some suntan lotion on the window paneafterwards. Dust and suntan lotion absorb ultraviolet light, while it is reflected by clean partsof the panes. A contrasting pattern evolves and birds will be warned and veer off in time.But what about the dirt and the dots on the pane? Here is a little experiment you can tryyourself right now: Look through a window at any object you choose, for example the numberof your neighbour’s house, and keep the picture in your mind. Then dab some grease on thewindow pane in a way that the dots are about a span apart. Then look again at the number ofyour neighbour’s house. You will see it the same way as before although you are lookingthrough a dirty pane!That is because we only see what we want to see. Whenever we want to see the number ofthe house, the daubing and the dirt are automatically erased in our mind - we somehow lookright through the dirt. Only if we want to see the dirt we see it, but then the number is erased.That is why we can even look through net curtains and see what is going on outside. We areonly world champions in window cleaning because people want us to believe we should lookat the window and not through it. By the way: First we polish the pane and then we pull thecurtain before it - what is that good for?So what is to be done? Do not clean the windows on the outside. Thus, the pane willrefract the reflections and warn birds. Put some suntan lotion (protection factor 30) inyour palm and then use your fingertip to dab it on the outside of the pane in small dotsabout a span apart. And if you do want to clean your window from time to time, dabsuntan lotion on the pane again after cleaning it. Ever since I have been doing that Ihave not found any more dead birds!Dr. Friedrich Buer and Martin Regner, Georg-Vogel-Str. 6, D-91413 Neustadt a. d. Aisch, Phone: 09161/7556, E-Mail:
dr.friedrich.buer@gmx.de - State of January 2006
