If it's never happened to you, it probably sounds vaguely amusing to have a bird fly smack into your window. You can imagine it as it would happen on a Tom & Jerry cartoon, with a little ring of stars appearing above the bird's head as it slowly slides down to the floor, ready to fly off again for a whole host of new adventures. The reality is sadly a lot more gruesome - most of the time, they fly into the glass with such force that they break their necks and die instantly.
I couldn't find any data relating to the number of birds that die in this way in the UK but, according to the eartheasy website, "Experts believe that over 100 million birds die each year in collisions with buildings and skyscrapers in the United States and Canada alone." That's a lot of birds. With figures that high, it seems amazing that you don't notice dead birds all over the place but apparently, predators snap them up almost before they hit the ground.
A really quick and simple way to avoid this problem is to stick something on the window so that the birds won't confuse the reflection of the sky with the real thing. You can buy specially-designed bird-scaring transfers in all sorts of shapes, including predatory birds, but for these Window Alert ones, they come in pretty butterfly shapes. As far as humans are concerned, it wouldn't really matter what shape they were because they're totally transparent so you can't see them at all when you stick them on the windows (which the girls were actually a bit disappointed about because they thought they were pretty and fancied the idea of having butterfly transfers stuck on their windows !).
Even if the human eye can't see them, the manufacturers assure us that the birds can. "WindowAlert is a static-cling decal that's easily applied to windows at home, at the office, on greenhouses, conservatories or anywhere that glass may create an invisible (and fatal) obstacle. The decals contain a component which reflects ultraviolet sunlight - undetectable to humans, it glows brightly for birds to spell out danger ahead !"
Well, it certainly can't hurt and they're so unobtrusive that it's certainly no hardship to have them on your windows.
star rating : 4/5
RRP : £6.99 for 4 bird-friendly decals
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