(no subject)

[darkoshi]

When I mentioned to Bro about the cardinals banging at the windows, he said he had seen birds flying into the sunroom windows. That reminded me of a dead bird I found in the back yard a while back... I didn't know what had killed it, but it seems plausible it might have flown into the windows and died from that, because the windows are very reflective.

So now I've been looking up what I can do to prevent birds from killing themselves on my windows. Some sites sell UV-reflective decals like these. Then I was thinking, wouldn't it be cheaper to just buy some UV-reflective film and cut it into small pieces? Then I was thinking, since my windows are reflective, don't they already reflect all the UV? Mirrored sunglasses reflect UV light, so why wouldn't mirrored windows also reflect it? And how can putting a UV-reflective decal on a UV-reflective window really help? Supposedly for the decals to be really effective, you have to use a lot of them, since birds may fly into gaps less than 2 inches by 4 inches.

Actually, I was unrelatedly thinking about how birds fly so fast through branches and trees... swooping down from the sky and into a tangle of branches without colliding with anything. It seemed that might make a good video game - instead of playing at being a pod-racer racing through canyons, playing at being a bird, and flying through obstacles like trees and branches.

I guess I'll get some of the decals, since I can't be sure that the clear UV window film is the same material and that it would work the same way. Sigh. It sure is difficult, not being omniscient and knowing all these things.

Hmm. They don't call them video games anymore, or do they?

Comments

[ninox.livejournal.com]

Silhouette of birds of preys also does the trick. I had a friend with one room with windows close to the corner on both sides. For about a month they had a dawn chorus of the suicide run trying to fly through the house.

This was the recommended technique of the time and it worked!

Oh and birds do get it wrong. Working with birds of prey, I have seen numerous one crash into branches, fall off walls etc. The funniest that was a barn owl that didn't want to fly in the wind and accidently fell into a rubbish bin.

[darkoshi]

I might try some of those too then. I'm still not convinced that putting uv-reflective decals on a mirrored surface will really help. This page also mentions something called "holographic scare tape" - I'll look into what that is, this evening.

[ninox.livejournal.com]

The mind boggles!