Just read that glass with a coating cuts strikes by over 60 percent

I was looking up ways to make my patio windows safer for birds and came across this study from the American Bird Conservancy. They tested different kinds of glass treatments and found that UV reflective coatings dropped window strikes by more than 60 percent. I always figured the little decals I put up were helping, but it turns out they barely make a dent compared to that coated glass. The tricky part is that most of us aren't going to replace all our windows just for this. But they also talked about external screens and netting which do a similar job for way less money. I'm thinking about trying a cheap netting setup on my worst window, the one that faces the feeder. Has anyone here used that see through screen stuff and noticed a difference?

2 comments

2 Comments

the_robert12d agoMost Upvoted

Flew right into that one like a confused cardinal myself. I rigged up some of that cheap netting from a hardware store on my worst window last spring, the one near the feeder where I was finding a sad little thump almost every morning. Honestly felt like a doofus stretching it over a frame I built from old PVC pipes, looked ridiculous from the inside but the birds completely stopped hitting that pane. The UV coating thing sounds amazing but yeah, who's gonna drop thousands on new windows when you can spend like thirty bucks on netting and some zip ties. Still got one window I haven't covered yet and of course that's the one where a mourning dove just bounced off yesterday, so the experiment continues I guess.

jamieperez12d ago

The sad little thump every morning" lol I felt that in my soul. I've got a window where it sounds like someone's dropping a bag of potatoes every time a bird hits it. I tried tape strips once, bird just flew around them and tagged the glass anyway. Might have to try that PVC pipe setup, my neighbors already think I'm the weird bird lady so what's a little more janky netting on the patio gonna hurt