Help prevent birds from fatal glass strikes--apply stickers to the OUTSIDE of windows

Over 1 billion birds die every year in the United States when they collide with windows and strike glass*. Over half of these glass strikes occur on our home windows. Fortunately, this is something that we can help to prevent by screening or marking the outside of our windows. There are numerous effective products on the market to prevent glass strikes, but if you're on a tight budget, there are inexpensive ways to mark your windows, such as painting designs (which I explained how to do in an earlier post), applying decals, or hanging parachute cording on the outside of the window.

Here, we'll look at the second of these preventative: applying stickers or decals to the outside of your windows. Stickers and decals are available for purchase but if you're on a tight budget making the stickers yourself is a lot more economical. Simply cut out designs on light colored solid or patterned self-adhesive kitchen contact paper or water resistant self-sticking wallpaper. Apply the stickers or decals to the outside of the window. This is very important because it is the reflection on the outside of the windows that birds may mistake as vegetation or an opening in vegetation. The gaps between the stickers or decals must be less than 2 inches to provide sufficient protection for our smallest birds. Gaps larger than 2 inches can be filled in with sticker dots or painted dots. 

I hope this helps to make it easy for you to mark your windows to prevent bird strikes. Let me know if you have any questions. Find these directions and other methods for preventing bird collisions with glass in Nature's Action Guide: How to Support Biodiversity and Your Local Ecosystem, a companion to Doug Tallamy's Nature's Best Hope. We hope you'll join the movement and help support wildlife and biodiversity where you live, work, and play. Let's show the world it can be done!

*Daniel Klem, Jr.; Peter G. Saenger; Brandon P. Brogle, Evidence, consequences, and angle of strike of bird–window collisions. The Wilson Journal of Ornithology (2024) 136 (1): 113–119. https://doi.org/10.1676/23-00045