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The glass at McCormick Place in Chicago is a lethal obstacle for birds

theguardian.com

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Re: The glass at McCormick Place in Chicago is a lethal obstacle for birds

#61

Post by nicolaslem »

mactavish88 wrote: post #53
nicolaslem wrote: post #4

I highly encourage anyone who had birds crash on their windows to install white dot stickers. I installed some last spring on my windows and not a single bird crashed on them since. At first they look a bit odd, but after a week they were almost invisible, turns out the brain is really good at hiding things we don't care to see. They are a bit of a pain to install but it is well worth the effort.

We find that, while this deters birds, it seems to attract bees. They fly and land on many individual dots before eventually flying away. Has anyone else experienced this?

I have not noticed anything like this.

Re: The glass at McCormick Place in Chicago is a lethal obstacle for birds

#62

Post by zw123456 »

I had this happen at my place a number of times, my house is up on a hill with large windows facing the view. I didn't want to put stickers or other things that would detract from the view. A neighbor mentioned that they put up a couple of decorative hanging plants off to the side of the windows, didn't have to be right in front which would block the view. I opted for a couple of hanging outdoor art pieces (I have a brown thumb). It worked, my theory is it gives the birds something to gauge perspective on perhaps. I am not sure how that could work for skyscrapers, but for a home like mine it worked like a charm.

Re: The glass at McCormick Place in Chicago is a lethal obstacle for birds

#63

Post by whycome »

giantrobot wrote: post #50
bbarn wrote: post #35

Mildly related anecdote: At one job, we had an expensive office built out as our company grew. The CEO and CTO came in from out of town to do the ribbon cutting so to speak and welcome us to our new office. I was there as a manager doing setup before we moved the main workforce into the new office, and the CTO came through the kitchen to talk to me, and smashed his face right into a glass wall. Broke his nose and had…

When Apple Park first started migrating teams a number of people walked into the glass doors in the hallways. They pretty quickly put up little markers on the glass. It was still a stupid design not built for humans.

People adapt and become less human... There must be a weird sort of anxiety to walk around and be extra cautious that reality can suddenly turn into a glass wall.

Re: The glass at McCormick Place in Chicago is a lethal obstacle for birds

#64

Post by p1mrx »

gus_massa wrote: post #57
xoa wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless you have a UV camera then no, there is no indication to humans [0]. Though as sibling said, if nothing else you'd have the obvious direct grim evidence if they had failed. But at the same time I've not found it a concern in practice, there's plenty of stuff in a household that simply needs to be replaced/renewed on an annual or semi-annual basis with no particular indicator before failure. Just part of buildin…

A few years ago, my wife was taking photos of spectral lines of a mercury lamp with our normal camera and she noticed an additional line in the photo. It was an UV line that was visible by the camera but not by the eye. [IIRC a Cannon camera, not very expensive or fancy. It was very good taking photos of dark rooms during birthdays.] Edit: Fixed typo IV -> UV

> It was an IV line that was visible by the camera but not by the eye.

If you can't see infraviolet, consider taking a colorblind test.

Re: The glass at McCormick Place in Chicago is a lethal obstacle for birds

#65

Post by oooyay »

nicolaslem wrote: post #4

I highly encourage anyone who had birds crash on their windows to install white dot stickers. I installed some last spring on my windows and not a single bird crashed on them since. At first they look a bit odd, but after a week they were almost invisible, turns out the brain is really good at hiding things we don't care to see. They are a bit of a pain to install but it is well worth the effort.

I get a lot of birds in my yard and decorated the windows with translucent UV stickers. Now every sunset I get to see a stained glass dragon on my wood floors. Highly recommend.

Re: The glass at McCormick Place in Chicago is a lethal obstacle for birds

#66

Post by whycome »

mactavish88 wrote: post #53
nicolaslem wrote: post #4

I highly encourage anyone who had birds crash on their windows to install white dot stickers. I installed some last spring on my windows and not a single bird crashed on them since. At first they look a bit odd, but after a week they were almost invisible, turns out the brain is really good at hiding things we don't care to see. They are a bit of a pain to install but it is well worth the effort.

We find that, while this deters birds, it seems to attract bees. They fly and land on many individual dots before eventually flying away. Has anyone else experienced this?

They think they're flowers? UV light equivalent?

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-11971274 "Database shows how bees see world in UV"

Re: The glass at McCormick Place in Chicago is a lethal obstacle for birds

#68

Post by kevinmchugh »

We'd had a very warm fall until Wednesday of this week. Temperature dropped 30 degrees. Birds had been enjoying the warm weather and then the sudden change had them all migrating at once. They ran into a rainstorm which made migration very difficult (this is called fallout). So now you've got tons of birds struggling to migrate and aiui flying at lower altitude because of the rain

McCormick (the building in question) is a very large building immediately off the lake with lots of glass windows. There may be some additional mitigations to be made but it's a bad confluence of events. It doesn't happen even once a decade.

This is an important migration corridor, there's even a nice bird sanctuary within site of McCormick. If you're ever there for a convention the area surrounding the convention center is very nice. Northerly Island is becoming one of the nicest parks in Chicago, and is a wonderful walk from the convention center.

Re: The glass at McCormick Place in Chicago is a lethal obstacle for birds

#69

Post by Intralexical »

p1mrx wrote: post #64
gus_massa wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A few years ago, my wife was taking photos of spectral lines of a mercury lamp with our normal camera and she noticed an additional line in the photo. It was an UV line that was visible by the camera but not by the eye. [IIRC a Cannon camera, not very expensive or fancy. It was very good taking photos of dark rooms during birthdays.] Edit: Fixed typo IV -> UV

> It was an IV line that was visible by the camera but not by the eye. If you can't see infraviolet, consider taking a colorblind test.

> infraviolet

…Blue?

Re: The glass at McCormick Place in Chicago is a lethal obstacle for birds

#70

Post by i_love_cookies »

ethagknight wrote: post #26
kasey_junk wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are stickers on the building. It is a nearly 600000 square foot building and the exterior is all windows. 1000 birds don’t hit it _every day_ this was an exceptional even caused by specific conditions. The facility is actively trying new lighting solutions to mitigate bird strikes as that’s the main issue.

A crew of window cleaners could hit it in under a week

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