A new study in The Condor asks whether wildlife-friendly yards increase bird-window collisions? The answer is yes, sort of. That is, yes there are more collisions but — at least in part — that’s because there are more birds.
The study is one of the few that at least tries to analyze bird-building collisions, particularly with houses rather than tall commercial buildings. Given how many houses there are, even a few collisions per house can lead to the loss of huge number of birds (think a billion). The study also relied on thousands of observations made by citizen scientists just like you! That’s good motivation for all of us going out on a Christmas Bird Count or participating in Project FeederWatch.
An excellent article at the Forbes Web site summarizes the study. (Warning: the first part of the summary is fairly technical.) Even better, the article mentions plenty of easy ways to cut down on the number of window strikes at your house.