Bird-Safe Campus

Bird-Safe Campus
TRENT UNIVERSITY STUDENT CENTRE
New Construction | Frit | Voluntary Action

Is Your Campus Bird-Safe?

We developed Bird-Safe Campus to empower students, professors, faculties, and others in the pursuit of a collision-free campus environment. Throughout its development, we engaged leaders and researchers who are familiar with the unique needs of academic institutions and potential barriers to action. The result? A one-of-a-kind bird-safe solution particularly tailored to campus needs.

Detailed guides, tools and best practices are at the core of Bird-Safe Campus: to enable leaders to advocate for and implement bird-safe solutions and practices on campus. If you have been hoping to start something on your own campus and don’t know where to begin, this is the resource for you. Join the growing flock and make a difference for birds, while building your network, relationships, and your resume.

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Stay connected, share insights, and celebrate bird-safe efforts and successes on campus.

The Bird-Safe Campus crest identifies the four main facets of FLAP Canada’s mission. We are dedicated to safeguarding migratory birds in the built environment through: Education, Research, Rescue and Advocacy.

Campus Showcase

BirdSafe UofT Window Treatment
A BirdSafe UofT initiative at the University of Toronto
York University bird-safe window retrofits
York University
Student-led initiative to empower City of Guelph residents and University of Guelph to make windows bird-safe
University of Guelph
Bird-safe retrofit of Western Interdisciplinary Research Building
University of Western Ontario
Bird-safe window art contest and application
University of British Columbia
Public symposium on bird-window collisions at Glendon Campus in Toronto
York University

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The Issue

A Brief Primer on the Bird-Building Collision Issue

Chances are, you’re here because you care about birds and want to take action to protect them. Birds are in trouble, and many species are declining steeply and rapidly. We need to act now.

This page offers a brief primer on the issue of bird collisions with glass to give you the facts you need to speak up for birds on campus.

What’s the issue?

Migratory birds make astounding seasonal movements each year, some traveling thousands of kilometers each way between their northern breeding grounds and wintering grounds in the tropics. Birds now have the added challenge of coping with all the cities and structures that have been built along their migration routes.

Many songbirds, including warblers, vireos, thrushes, and sparrows, migrate at night. Light pollution from urban areas can throw birds off course, drawing them into and trapping them in a maze of tall structures and glass.

During the day, migrating birds need to find places to rest and refuel. Urban parks, woodlots, and even your campus can be attractive places for a tired and hungry migratory songbird to stop.

Although collisions occur year-round, they are most frequent during the spring and fall migratory periods, when birds are forced to navigate through unfamiliar urban environments.

Collisions with glass are one of the most significant sources of direct, human-caused mortality for birds, affecting young and old, common and endangered species alike. Recent estimates suggest that 16-42 million birds die each year in Canada alone by colliding with glass. Estimates in the United States suggest that close to one billion birds are killed annually by window collisions.

Why does it happen?

Reflective glass on buildings and structures can mirror potential habitat or sky, tricking birds into thinking they are flying towards a new place to forage or an escape route. They may also be fooled by the visual passageways we create with transparent glass. In their natural habitats, many birds are used to flying swiftly through small passageways in dense vegetation. In urban areas, they assume they can continue their flight to the other side but don’t see the transparent panes of glass in between. Because birds can’t perceive glass as a solid object, they often collide at full speed.

There are a variety of factors that can make collisions more likely to occur:

Season: during spring and fall migration, billions of birds are on the move and many must pass through urban areas.
Weather: when cloud cover is low, such as on foggy or rainy nights, birds fly at lower altitudes and are more likely to be disoriented by light pollution. On bright, sunny days, reflections on glass may be more pronounced and collisions tend to be more frequent.
Location: some urban areas are along major migratory corridors or along the edges of large bodies of water, which have an even higher number of birds passing through or stopping over to rest.
Landscape features: many songbirds look for stopover habitats with forest cover or naturalized vegetation, especially areas near fresh water.
Building features: the reflectivity of windows, the amount of glass exposed, the surrounding vegetation, and artificial lighting are all factors that influence mortality risk.
Presence of bird attractants: bird feeders and bird baths placed near windows draw birds closer to built structures.

Why does it matter?

Birds, like any living being, have intrinsic worth – there are ethical issues associated with ignoring a significant cause of mortality that is entirely preventable. Birds also have cultural, economic, and ecological value. Birds provide an accessible connection to the natural world for many people. Birdwatching contributes billions of dollars to the economy. Birds pollinate plants, distribute seeds, and control pest populations. We may only realize the true economic value of these services when it is too late, when we no longer have birds providing free tree-planting services, taking care of pest outbreaks, or keeping disease in check.

Most species of birds in Canada are protected under the Migratory Birds Convention Act (MBCA), federal legislation that prohibits the intentional or unintentional harming, disturbance or killing of migratory birds, as well as their nests and eggs. In addition, under Canada’s Species at Risk Act (SARA), it is illegal to harm or kill a federally listed threatened or endangered species. Provinces may also have other pieces of legislation that protect birds.

How can we stop it?

We can stop bird-window collisions by providing birds with visual signals such as markers on glass or architectural design features that alert them to the presence of glass, allowing them to safely avoid a collision. For best practices, learn about the City of Toronto’s Bird-Friendly Best Practices Glass. For bird-safe buildings standards, learn about FLAP Canada’s BirdSafe® Building Standard for Mitigating Daytime Bird-Window Collisions and the Canadian Standards Association’s (CSA) Bird Friendly Building Design standard.

Campus Monitoring Program

Why Monitor Your Campus?

Good data provides solid evidence for effective advocacy. The data collected through comprehensive monitoring programs can be invaluable for documenting the scale of the issue at the campus level, as well as effectively prioritizing treatment areas.

Monitoring programs are also a great way to involve and educate students and other groups about the bird-building issue. Students interested in pursuing careers in the biological sciences will gain valuable skills such as fieldwork and data entry experience, as well as honing or developing bird identification skills.

Prioritizing the rescue and rehabilitation of injured birds that have collided with windows is also an important ethical goal and a key facet of FLAP Canada’s mission.

This section discusses the steps and considerations involved with starting a formal monitoring program on campus.

TIP:

Not ready to dive into formal monitoring? There are other ways to help! Get together a group and participate in FLAP’s Global Bird Rescue event during the first week of October each year.

Throughout the year, document any window-collision victims you come across on FLAP’s Global Bird Collision Mapper. Keep rescue supplies in your backpack to safely contain and transport an injured bird to a wildlife rehabilitation facility.

Seven Steps for Starting a Monitoring Program on Campus

STEP 1:

Define Monitoring Objectives

The first step to starting a monitoring program is deciding on one or more objectives of the monitoring. Do you want to estimate how many birds are killed on your campus each year? Or which of the subset of potentially dangerous buildings or façades should be prioritized for immediate treatment? Will bird-rescue and rehabilitation also be a key goal of your monitoring?

By explicitly defining clear, quantifiable objectives, you can ensure a suitable study design and data collection approaches that meet your objectives.

STEP 2:

Plan for Success

A successful monitoring program requires front-end planning. Questions to consider:

Do you or an involved faculty member have the appropriate permits (i.e., a Scientific Permit from Canadian Wildlife Services) required to handle or possess migratory birds?
Are there any requirements for animal care training? Check with your campus Animal Care Committee.
Are there any safety concerns with monitoring on campus, either early in the morning or otherwise? Are the buildings safe to walk around?
How much time will it take to survey the buildings you have in mind? Who will do the monitoring, and how will this be organized?
How will you manage live birds? Where is the nearest wildlife rehabilitation facility, and how will birds be transported there?
Are there people involved who have the necessary expertise to assist in rescue of potentially dangerous birds, such as birds of prey?

STEP 3:

Develop a Monitoring Protocol

The essence of monitoring is simple. Walk around the perimeter of a structure and look for evidence of collisions. This could be a dead or injured bird; a pile of feathers; a powdered imprint, feathers or bodily fluids on the glass; or witnessing a collision yourself.

The exact protocol you use will depend on your objectives, but keep the following best practices in mind when developing your protocol:

Clearly document your sampling locations.
Keep detailed records of the survey effort (e.g., the number of buildings you survey and/or sampling hours and number of surveyors).
Record instances when no birds were found during a survey to ensure representative and non-biased results.
Record and track incidental observations separately (e.g., a dead bird you find by chance at a location that is not part of your survey, or at a time other than your survey time).

Full-year sampling (both spring and fall migration seasons) is most useful as risk factors and problem locations may change depending on the season. FLAP Canada conducts collision monitoring in the Toronto area from late March to early June in the spring, and late August to early November in the fall. Because species migrate at different times, it is difficult to pick a significantly shorter “peak migration” time that accurately accounts for the majority of species passing through your campus. Consider exploring bar charts of sighting data on eBird to identify peak songbird migration times in your area.

In deciding on the time of day surveys should take place, consider the objectives of your monitoring. FLAP Canada has found that early morning surveys are the most useful for being able to rescue collision victims. Other studies have suggested that because most collisions occur during the daytime, afternoon surveys will detect more carcasses if they are present. Surveying multiple times a day will increase the likelihood of being able to find and rescue live birds.

TEMPLATE: York University in Toronto has customized a survey protocol (modified from Hager and Cosentino, 2014), combining the goals of bird rescue and rehabilitation and identifying the buildings in most urgent need of treatment. Download and modify this template to suit your needs.

TEMPLATE: Other useful templates, such as carcass ID tags and field sheets, can be downloaded here.

STEP 4:

Choose Monitoring Locations

The locations you select will depend on your objectives for monitoring. If your objective is a representative estimate of bird mortality on campus, you will likely have to consider randomization in your study design so that your results are not biased towards a particular type of building.

If you are trying to identify which of several suspected problem buildings are in most immediate need of treatment, you will look for potentially hazardous buildings and features. Examples of hazardous architectural design features/settings:

Windows (especially large ones) reflecting natural habitat, e.g., lobbies adjacent to dense woodlots

Transparent walkways or other features that give the impression of clear passage (e.g., linkways, solariums, skywalks, atria, and alcoves)
Structures close to natural areas (e.g., parks, woodlots or ravines), or that have landscaped vegetation nearby

A simple way to quickly identify dangerous buildings is through FLAP’s Building Risk Assessment App (the FLAP App). The FLAP App is an Android application that provides users with the means to assess the level of risk a building and its individual façades pose to birds.

TIP: Hawk decals or other makeshift bird deterrents are usually a sign that someone has recognized a bird collision issue at a particular location.

TIP: Maintenance or security staff may be able to tell you if and where dead or injured birds are found on campus.

STEP 5:

Recruit and Train Volunteers

Monitoring can be a lot of work, so depending on how large an area you are tackling, consider recruiting volunteers to help you. You can find volunteers by:

Distributing an e-mail request across your department or faculty
Posting a notice on a campus bulletin board
Approaching undergraduate students taking relevant courses, such as ornithology or conservation biology
Asking your friends and classmates

It helps if volunteers have had fieldwork experience and are moderately comfortable handling and identifying songbirds, but it’s not critical. Be sure to conduct a training session for your volunteers. Cover the monitoring protocol and procedures, data entry, health and safety precautions, and how to safely handle and rescue injured birds.

TIP: FLAP’s Volunteer Training Manual covers best practices for bird rescue.

Note that student volunteers may be required to register for a non-credit course to ensure proper training and coverage in case of accident/injury while conducting surveys.

STEP 6:

Start Surveys

Be respectful of people inside the buildings you survey. Do not invade their privacy by looking inside office or classroom windows.

If you are coordinating a group of volunteers, open communication and your continued involvement throughout the survey period is critical to the success of the monitoring. You can ensure consistent data collection methods among volunteers, keep track of emerging health and safety issues on campus, and provide necessary ongoing support for your volunteers.

It’s worth noting that you may occasionally get some odd looks during your surveys. People will be curious about what you’re looking for and will sometimes ask. Use this as an opportunity to educate them on this important issue and encourage them to keep a lookout for dead or injured birds as well.

TIP: Bring along information sheets to hand out when people ask about the monitoring.

STEP 7:

Reporting

Keep meticulous records of any bird casualties that you discover during your monitoring. At a minimum, include date, time, species, status (i.e. injured or dead), and which side of which building it was found at. Keep your notes as legible and self explanatory as possible.

If you have used hard copy datasheets in the field, it’s recommended you transcribe this data into a communally available form such as a Google Docs file accessible by those involved in the survey. Back up all photos and scanned datasheets on a service such as Dropbox.

You are also encouraged to add your records to FLAP’s Global Bird Collision Mapper. The Mapper is useful as a repository for your records for multiple reasons. First, it allows a great visual overview of collision hotspots on your campus, since you choose the exact location on a building a bird was found. Second, the data is publicly available so anyone can view and access your data.

TIP: If you would like to set up a group to communally report your monitoring data on the Mapper, contact mapper@flap.org.

Download an Example of a Monitoring-Survey Protocol

BSC Monitoring Protocol

Student Education

Educate and Engage My Students

Understanding and addressing the bird-building issue requires the input and expertise of biologists, architects, engineers, lawyers, policy makers, and more. The interdisciplinary nature of this issue presents an opportunity to involve and educate students across a wide variety of faculties and departments to prepare them to meet the conservation and sustainability challenges of the future.

There are ample opportunities for experiential learning activities to complement course learning objectives. Students can apply the knowledge and theory they learn through their coursework to tackle real-world challenges. Designing assignments and activities to be realistic and similar to what they might face in the workplace gets students to start thinking like professionals and helps them understand the relevance of the concepts learned in class. These types of activities are a great way to enhance student engagement and learning, as well as equip them with necessary technical and problem-solving skills to be successful in the workplace.

Photo by Lisa Horn

FLAP Canada data analysis

FLAP Canada data analysis: Thanks to the dedication and contribution of hundreds of citizen scientists across North America, FLAP has generated a large database of window collision observations. Much of this data is publicly available and downloadable from the FLAP Global Bird Collision Mapper. By working with bird collision data and making discoveries through their own research questions, students can learn how to handle and process large datasets, run simple statistics, and present data effectively. Potential research questions for students to explore include:

Which species are most susceptible to window collisions and why?
What are peak migration and collision periods and what steps can individuals or municipalities take to reduce window collisions during this time?
How do local weather patterns influence collision risk? (TIP: you can download local historical weather data from the Government of Canada website)

TIP: E-mail flap@flap.org to request this dataset for use in your course.

Developing science communication skills

Learning to communicate the importance of scientific research and findings to a broad, non-scientific audience is an important skill for emerging scientists to develop. Writing an article about the importance of the bird-window collision issue for an external audience (e.g., a blog or student newspaper) can encourage students to think creatively about why a topic matters and practice sharing information in an accessible and engaging way.

Writing to policy makers

Students should feel empowered to use their voice to influence policy about environmental issues they feel strongly about. Reaching out to policy makers (or university administrators) regarding the bird-window collision issue can help students learn how to make a compelling argument and present information to a non-academic audience. It can also help them to clarify their own thoughts on the issue by identifying the changes they would like to see adopted to combat extensive bird mortality.

Bird-friendly window art

The sky is the limit for designing attractive, bird-friendly buildings and window treatments. Have students create their own bird-friendly window treatments, making sure they meet FLAP’s standards for visual markers. Incorporate a community education and engagement component by having designs portray relevant messages about bird conservation. Consider having the winning design applied to problem windows on campus, either as temporary, student-generated window art or a professional, permanent application (note that any modifications to buildings will require prior approval from the relevant department and facilities).

Bird-friendly building design for architecture students

Design a building as part of coursework that complies with sustainable design requirements. Ensure that the elements of bird-friendly architecture are examined along with all other aspects of a building’s performance. The Toronto Green Standard (TGS) may be used as a template for sustainable design for municipalities that do not currently have their own requirements. Companion documents to the TGS describe best practices for preventing bird collisions and avoiding lighting conditions that attract and disorient birds.

On-campus field trips

We have a good understanding about what makes a building or façade dangerous to birds. On-campus field trips can allow students to integrate their knowledge of hazardous building and landscape features to identify buildings on campus that may be high-risk for migratory birds.

TIP: FLAP’s Building Risk Assessment App (the FLAP App) is a free Android application that provides users with the means to quickly assess the level of risk a building and its individual façades pose to birds.

Off-campus field trips

If your city has adopted bird-friendly development guidelines, visit a variety of buildings to see how bird-friendly design can be effectively and attractively implemented. Students can learn about the range of effective mitigation options, what makes a mitigation measure effective, and see their application firsthand.

Scientific data collection

Consider having students collect bird-window collision data on campus. If you’ve already done a field trip to identify high-risk buildings on your campus, those buildings would be a good place to target monitoring. Students can learn about survey design, field data collection, data entry, and bird identification. For more information on conducting formal monitoring, click here.

Assessing and influencing public awareness

Many members of the public are unaware of the important conservation issue presented by bird-window collisions. Have students create a public awareness campaign to educate and inform campus community members about this issue. Prior to the campaign, students can poll members of the campus community to assess their baseline awareness and knowledge of the issue and potential solutions. After the event, to determine if students were successful and achieved their goals, students should poll community members again.

Experimental window treatment

Create a project whereby students can apply and test the efficacy of various mitigation options on problem buildings (note that any modifications to buildings will require prior approval from your department and facilities). Mitigation can include commercially available treatments or even temporary, student-generated window art. Have students make predictions on the efficacy of the treatments, monitor treated and untreated windows throughout migration for evidence of bird-window collisions, and conduct analyses on the collected data.

Deceased birds as educational and research tools

Faculty members that have appropriate permits to handle and possess migratory birds may choose to use deceased window-collision victims found on campus for educational or research purposes. For example, by preserving specimens for a campus museum, birds can be used to help students develop identification skills and an understanding of avian anatomy. Universities have also used specimens for undergraduate student research studies, such as studies on pollutants or bird body composition.

Participate as a group in Global Bird Rescue

Every fall during the first week of October, FLAP holds a week-long event to encourage people across the world to search for and report dead or injured birds that have collided with structures. Create a lab or tutorial activity during Global Bird Rescue to search for, document, and report dead or injured birds found around campus.

Is Your Campus Bird-Safe?

Subscribe to the Bird-Safe Campus e-Newsletter!

Campus Showcase

BirdSafe UofT Window Treatment

York University bird-safe window retrofits

Student-led initiative to empower City of Guelph residents and University of Guelph to make windows bird-safe

Bird-safe retrofit of Western Interdisciplinary Research Building

Bird-safe window art contest and application

Public symposium on bird-window collisions at Glendon Campus in Toronto