In Search of a Solution for Bird Window Collisions

One of the many things I love about my native England is the house names.  Proud owners of anything from the most humble cottage to the grandest estate give their homes a name. The name may be the family name, as in "Hartford Manor", or it may be inspired by the environs of the house, as in "Meadow View Lodge" or "Lakeside Cottage."

A while back, Eric and I, just for fun, were trying to come up with a name of our house.  We thought of "Pine Villa" and "Squirrel's Rest", but eventually, we lost the pine tree, and the wooded lots either side of our house were built on, so those names no longer fit.

One recurring name that kept coming up was "Dove's Demise".  Not exactly something one would want on a slate by the front door, but in our case over the years it would be considered an appropriate name.

As much as I like to garden for wildlife, and keep the feeders and birdbaths filled, an alarming number of birds, mostly Mourning or White Winged doves, have crashed into the windows across the back of our house and died.

This photo gives you  gives you a good idea why.  I was standing by the bird bath and bird feeder when I took it, and you can see that the blue sky is reflected in the windows.

What often happens is that a truck or something noisy will come along the road behind our wall and startle the birds, who will take flight and scatter en masse. They don't perceive the glass, but just see the sky reflected and think they can fly through.  Inside the house we hear a loud *thunk* and look out to see a bird lying dead on the patio with a broken neck.

We're running out of places to bury them. :-(

We have tried various stickers on the windows with not much success, so I started searching for a better solution.

That's when I found The Bird Screen Company. 

The screens aren't expensive and they are easy to install - I was able to install them myself last weekend using the suction cup mount option that was included. 

 As you can see, they are made of black vinyl screen and hang several inches from the window and are secured top and bottom to give tension.  From inside the house, they do not block the view and should a bird happen to hit the screen, it softens the impact, allowing the bird to fly away unharmed.

You can read the history of how they were developed here.

So far, I have installed them on the three living room windows, and the patio door, which were the windows that have been involved in the most bird collisions. (Haven't done the dining room yet - the windows on the right)

I'm hopeful that the birds in our garden will be safer and we no longer have to call our house "Dove's Demise".

If you've ever thought about giving your house a name, or even if you haven't, you might enjoy this House Naming Guide.


Words and photographs by Jayne Wilson, Green and Serene, Jayne's Country Garden.

Project Feeder Watch

 One of the things I have enjoyed the past couple of winters is being able to participate in Project Feeder Watch, a citizen science project organized by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. 

It's very simple to participate, there are just a few easy steps.

1) Choose your count site -- in my case, it was my own back yard, but I could also count at places like Kleb Woods where they have feeders if I wanted to, I suppose.

2) Choose your count days.  You have to select two consecutive days -- obviously, for me, the weekends are the natural count days.  The Feeder Watch program runs from November 9th through April 14 and you can count as often as every week if you wish.

3) To count the birds, you need to count the number of birds that are visible at one time.  So if you see three birds together, and then another two later on, you would log three, not five birds.  My problem was trying to count the number of house sparrows, of which there seemed to be hundreds, but I think I counted them out to 23 along the wall - by far the most prevelent bird in the garden this winter.

4) As the project is called "Project Feeder Watch", you have to make sure you only count birds that are attracted by your feeders, birdbaths, or other habitat you provide. So things like the these geese I photographed flying overhead back in November wouldn't be counted.

Nor would these Mourning doves, as they sit on the telephone wires.

But I *was* able to include this Cooper's Hawk who visited twice over the Thanksgiving weekend. 

OK so he was probably more attracted by the birds at the feeders than the actual feeders, but he was there, on the bird bath and he stayed long enough for me to walk up to within eight feet of him snapping photos, so I counted him!

I think the sparrow who had been holding his breath under the Savannah holly breathed a sigh of relief when I took a step too close and the hawk flew away. 

Find learn more about Project Feeder Watch and how to join in, visit http://feederwatch.org/

Words and photographs by Jayne Wilson, Green and Serene, Jayne's Country Garden.

Nest Watch!

We have two small live oaks in our front garden.  One was planted as part of the landscape package when we moved in four years ago.  It's now about 15 feet tall and nice and full. The other is one that we planted to replace one of the originals that died a year after it was planted. It's much smaller than the first, but it's coming along.

Both of them seem to be bird magnets and last year we had Northern Mockingbirds nesting.  So last weekend, when we were being serenaded all afternoon by a mockingbird, we assumed they had taken up residence again.

However, when I zoomed my camera in to the higher of the two nests in that tree, I was surprised to see it wasn't a mockingbird sitting on the nest, but a Mourning Dove.

I've entered this year's first nest attempt report at The Cornell Lab of Ornithology's Nest Watch web site, even though the nest is too high up for me to get details like the number of eggs etc. 

She's been sitting on the nest all week, and Eric, whose "man cave"/den looks out to the front garden told me that the mockingbird has been hanging around most of the week too.

We joke that the babies will be probably be some sort of mocking-dove hybrid.

Has anyone else seen this kind of camaraderie between bird species?


Words and photographs by Jayne Wilson, Green and Serene, Jayne's Country Garden.