Birds Crashing Into Windows
It's a pretty common problem for anyone who lives near birds. A bird sees your window and thinks it's open - and flies smash into it. Why do birds do this? How do you prevent it?
Really, this can happen for all sorts of reasons. The bird might not see the window at all and think the "hole in the wall" is an open spot to fly through. The bird might see something interesting inside your house that they want to go investigate.
On the other hand, the bird might see his reflection in the window and think an evil "intruder bird" (or perhaps a "lovely soulmate bird") is there waiting for him. He might fly down either to scare off the bird or to woo it.
In any case, having a bird whallop into your window is rarely a pleasant situation. We had this happen to a nuthatch a few years ago and it took 10 minutes to get the nuthatch to recover. How do you keep birds from smashing into your windows?
The most obvious solution is to pull the shades. If the bird sees shades or curtains, this not only makes it obviously not an "open hole in the wall", but also blocks reflections. So the various reasons a bird would smash into the window are all now handled.
If you really can't pull the blinds for some reason, you still have to break up this window so that it is obviously a "solid wall". Many birding stores sell cut out shapes of hawks and owls to stick on your window. This makes your window more visible to birds, and helps to break up any reflections that might form on them.
You can also hang things outside the window - from hanging flowers to windchimes to awnings - to help indicate that this is an area not meant for flying.
If birds keep smashing into your windows, though, it's really time to get curtains - even the light variety. Yes, you enjoy looking out your window ... but if your view is of birds dying daily, that's not a pretty sight to behold.
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