NRES students lead campuswide effort to save birds from window strikes

Most birdwatchers are drawn to the dynamism of birds — snippets of a call as flyers twist and dive overhead, or a flash of wings in the bushes, gone before you can snap a picture. But a group of students at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign goes out looking for a bleaker target: birds killed in collisions with buildings.

The Bird Strike Survey is a student-led, interdisciplinary effort. It’s anchored in the Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Sciences, part of the College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences, but students across campus came together to form the leadership team. NRES seniors Sarah Jacobson and Wren Dulnev contribute their expertise in ecology and field work, while Avi Berger, graduate student in the Department of Evolution, Ecology, and Behavior, is in charge of specimen preservation. They’re joined by Leilany Fuentes-Garcia, senior in sustainable design, and Ciara Roon West, junior in civil engineering, who provide crucial insight into bird-friendly construction practices.

Windows: An unexpected threat

Bird strikes refer to collisions with buildings, particularly those with large window panels. The number of birds killed in these collisions is staggering. “It's estimated that 1 billion birds die due to building strikes annually in North America alone,” Jacobson said. 

The bird strike survey at U. of I. began in 2019, when a group of ecology and evolutionary biology graduate students decided to do something about the number of bird strikes on campus.

“Bird strikes are a huge problem in combined urban and natural areas, like this campus, because a lot of birds use them as stopover habitat during migration,”Jacobson added. 

“Birds are crucial members of natural ecosystems and have captivated humans for millennia,” said Illinois bird expert Benjamin Van Doren. Van Doren is an assistant professor in NRES and is one of several faculty advisors to the project. “North American bird populations are currently declining at a worrying rate, and collisions with buildings are a large source of direct, human-caused mortality.”

Identifying culprit buildings on campus

The very features that make campus so attractive to people can make it dangerous for migratory birds. In the daytime, the Quad’s reflection on a glass building might be a pleasant sight; to birds, it’s a trap. Birds mistake these reflections for real trees and sky, and try to fly through windows at high speeds. And at night, when most birds migrate, artificial lighting is the culprit. Birds rely on visual markers to navigate the landscape, and when we leave the lights on, it disorients our feathered friends.

Volunteers look for injured birds during peak migration season, from September to November in the fall and from March to May in the spring. They survey problem buildings twice a day, scanning the ground for dead or injured birds. When they find a bird, they identify and document its species, in addition to important data such as where and when it was found, and the direction the offending window was facing. This data is then compiled to understand which buildings on campus are the most dangerous to birds, and which species are most affected. 

The team hopes their efforts will reduce bird deaths on campus. That’s where the design challenge comes in: “This project intersects the built environment and birds,” Fuentes-Garcia said. “As a sustainable design student, being a part of the Bird Strike Survey team has been a unique experience that has broadened my own understanding of environmental design.” 

Changes to building design are critical for bird conservation on campus, Fuentes-Garcia says. The Bird Strike Survey team is in communication with the university to install cost effective solutions, such as art overlays on windows to reduce reflection, or special sticker grids that create the illusion of an obstacle birds can’t pass through. 

Beyond bird strikes

Collecting dead birds may seem like a grim task, but the positive impact of the work and the opportunity to connect with like-minded people has made the project popular with avian enthusiasts on campus — it’s grown from one member to around twenty.  “We've been trying to expand and make it a community of bird lovers,” said Jacobson, the group’s volunteer coordinator. “It's been really fun. I've liked making it accessible to more people at the university.”

In addition to collecting data and making it available to researchers, volunteers run workshops and events. “The best part of the Bird Strike Survey is raising awareness of the issue and getting the campus community involved through outreach,” Dulnev said. “My favorite thing we've done is a window painting workshop using plexiglass and tempera paint, which demonstrated how easy it is to make your own home bird-safe and also customize your space a little.”

In one ongoing workshop series, volunteers preserve the birds they find, working hard to sort and preserve a collection of roughly 2,000 specimens. Berger, who has extensive experience in museum curation, is responsible for this part of the project. He leads workshops teaching other students how to identify and preserve the birds. The study skins, as the finished specimens are called, go to the ornithology teaching collections, stored at the Illinois Natural History Survey, part of the Prairie Research Institute at Illinois. 

“It's a good way to take an unfortunate death and turn it into something that is scientifically useful,” Berger said. “These specimens will last over 100 years if prepared well. Specimen collections give scientists the opportunity to compare populations over time and space.”

The specimens also help ornithology students become experts in bird identification. “Being able to interact with specimens up close gives students a really good opportunity to analyze details in a way that you can’t with a live bird, where you can see it, but then it flies away,” Berger said.

From conservation to education to research, the student volunteers’ work has had a tremendously positive impact on birds and those who appreciate them. 

“I am continually impressed by the students’ motivation and resourcefulness,” Van Doren said. “The efforts of the Bird Strike Survey not only make our campus safer for birds, but they are educating many others about the threats facing birds and wildlife. Only by working together can we make a difference in protecting the natural ecosystems on which we all rely.”

Get involved

Interested in gaining bird ID skills, meeting fellow conservation enthusiasts, and promoting bird conservation on campus? Go to the Bird Strike Survey’s website to sign up for the fall season, beginning September 5th. No bird knowledge or experience is required, but new volunteers must go on a practice run with a member of the leadership team. 
To make your home or workplace safer for birds, see the Audubon Society’s guide on reducing window collisions.