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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

#101

Post by Jorge1o1 »

konstantinua00 wrote: post #86
sandworm101 wrote: post #39

I worked in a building that attempted to address this. The three-story glass lobby had its glass wall raked outwards by 30*. If you approached the glass from inside then your feet would contact it before your face, which really helped at night when outside was brighter than the interior. And birds on the outside would see a reflection of the ground rather than transparent glass. All seemed good. Until a convention of…

huh, if anything, I wouldn't have imagined birds smacking into windows on first floor...

Many buildings are deliberately designed with mirrored glass on the first floor and lots of trees so that they can "blend in" with the urban landscape and look more "natural", less "artificial".

What's interesting is that what we as humans consider more natural is actually antithetical to nature, because when the birds see the reflected trees, they can't parse that it's a reflection and fly straight into it -- leading to bird deaths.

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

#102

Post by silenced_trope »

wink wrote: post #96

How can you write such an article and not put a photo of the building there? Yes, I can search one but WTF.

Right!?

I came here to ask the same question and Cmd-F-ed to this comment.

I had to google it to see the photos of the building.

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

#103

Post by KineticLensman »

Jorge1o1 wrote: post #101
konstantinua00 wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

huh, if anything, I wouldn't have imagined birds smacking into windows on first floor...

Many buildings are deliberately designed with mirrored glass on the first floor and lots of trees so that they can "blend in" with the urban landscape and look more "natural", less "artificial". What's interesting is that what we as humans consider more natural is actually antithetical to nature, because when the birds see the reflected trees, they can't parse that it's a reflection and fly straight into it -- leadin…

Yes birds mainly fly into my house windows when they see good reflections of the trees in the garden, in the windows.

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

#104

Post by callalex »

Intralexical wrote: post #69
p1mrx wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

Indigo, the made-up color that only exists to make the acronym slightly pronounceable.

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

#105

Post by harywilke »

kasey_junk wrote: post #25
hh3k0 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It’s also massive so mitigations will take a long time to be applied. Surely it cannot be too hard to slap 2 or 3 anti-collision decals on every window from the outside?

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.

To give a sense of the scale of this building: Part of the convention center empty: https://www.google.com/maps/@41.8535338,-87.6124521,3a,75y,6...

From what used to be Meigs Field. You have to back up quite a bit to see the entire building. It's very large, and right on the lake. https://www.google.com/maps/@41.8538295,-87.6090441,3a,75y,2...

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

#106

Post by tomcam »

giantrobot wrote: post #100
Animats wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did Apple use low-iron glass, as they do at the retail outlets? That eliminates the greenish tint in thick glass and is harder to see.

The glass was very transparent/untinted so I'd guess they did. Inside the atriums between sections don't have any tint from the glass or at least it's not noticeable. When my group first moved in the glass was ridiculously hard to see between the sections. It was made more confusing because the doorways had four panes of glass but only the center two panes were doors. It was easy early on to think the outermost lanes…

I'm guessing temperature control would be rough there most of the year, when it's sunny? Also what were the other issues you had with the building?

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

#107

Post by tomcam »

zo1 wrote: post #99
whycome wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I once ran into a glass door in my house a few years back. For months after that, I had anxiety and "flashback" like replays of the event when walking anywhere near that door/area in my house. That one incident affected the functioning of my brain for a really long time, it was quite jarring.

I mowed into a ground nest of hornets at my house a few months ago. Took me over a month to get back in the saddle. I "felt" the stings every time I walked near that patch.

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

#109

Post by worik »

On a related bird/window note:

Where I live there are many birds - we have been encouraging them for years after nearly exterminating them carelessly.

Two in particular, an indigenous bird we call the Fantail, or Pīwakawaka, and the common Starling.

The starlings occasionally blunder inside the house, and they cannot get out, they will repeatedly smash into the same window, over and over, until they brain themselves and loose consciousness or we take mercy and catch them and evict them.

The Pīwakawaka on the other hand will come in an open window, fly into every corner of the house looking for, catching, and eating flies, then fly out the window they came in.

One day I carelessly shut the windows with a Pīwakawaka in the house. I was sitting at my computer and the Pīwakawaka flew at my head, repeatedly, until I got up and opened a window for it to escape.

Birds can be remarkably stupid ("bird brained" for a reason) or they can be simply remarkable.

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

#110

Post by xwdv »

katbyte wrote: post #31
xwdv wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t like stickers on my windows, ruins the aesthetic. Instead we should have some kind of spray that transmits a wavelength of light only birds could see but is invisible to humans.

UV reflective stickers

Not invisible.
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