Make Your Campus Bird-Safe

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 Canada'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.