The more I try to help, the more I hurt. I have bird feeders out back to attract and help birds. My first hummingbird arrived two days ago. She committed suicide this afternoon by flying into our window opposite the trees. The reflection got her. A few hours earlier a Song Sparrow met its maker the same way. We probably lose a dozen birds a year this way. The largest bird to hit the glass was a young red-tailed hawk. He rattled the window, hit the ground, and sat there like he was trying to figure out what hit him. He eventually gathered his wits and sailed away.

About half the birds that hit the window die. Anyone found a way to avoid this mayhem?

Sticker in the form of a silhouette of a bird of prey. In any case, it is recommended, although I had a case of the death of a blackbird with a sticker on the window.

Grackles have been attacking me as I walk my dog lately. I hate those birds.

Owl decoy works pretty well as well as disposable tin pie pans hung from the soffit.(I.E. make motion + reflection).Ah,Grackles,it seems our state revenue dept. is spending our tax dollars on cloning them.

A couple places on the internet say this stuff works, no personal experience however:

http://www.amazon.com/23-Colli...-Rated/dp/B00C77B80K

No personal experience, but the net says the reflection of trees, branches, etc is what causes most of the collisions. Supposedly decals don't work although I suppose if you used enough of them it would break up the reflections.

Based on my research and feeding hummers for many years, I'd say move the feeders further away, or closer (where they would brush up against the glass and figure it out.....although how big can a hummers brain be?). If you're really serious about it, I think a layer of soft see thru screen in front of the window an inch or three would alleviate the problem.

Here's an article that pretty well covers the issue. The bird screen mentioned about half way down seems to be a possible reasonably cheap solution.

http://www.birdwatchingdaily.c...ent-windows-strikes/

I wonder whether a gill net in front of window might work. Net would not block light from outside, but might give bird reason to suspect obstruction.

I'm leaning towards a net like they use to cover fruit trees to keep birds away. I've actually got a new one in the garage. I'm probably going to put it up when the wife is away, otherwise I'm pretty sure she's going to rain on my parade.

What gets me is, how come the birds see the reflection of the trees in the background, but not the reflection of the bird flying right at them?

True story here. When The Crystal Palace was built in England for the big celebration,the only fly in the ointment was that it is out in the park it had trapped 100's of sparrows inside who do what all birds do.Victoria needing a solution fast said "Call Wellington". His immediate answer,"M'lady,employ sparrowhawks."

Plan-A has been in place about two weeks.

I've hung Bird-X netting by Gardeneer (Dalen) 14' X 14'. I did a little trimming. It now covers four tall windows that take most of the incoming kamikazes. Since the net has been up I've had one non-lethal impact (mourning dove) on a window surrounding the breakfast nook. That window did not have the net. I've had no impacts or entanglements on the windows that have the net. The net is fairly fine. You have to get within about 15' of the window before you can see it. Maybe the birds can see it as they approach, and abort their neck-breaking routine.

quote:

Originally posted by NormanConquest:
Owl decoy works pretty well as well as disposable tin pie pans hung from the soffit.(I.E. make motion + reflection).Ah,Grackles,it seems our state revenue dept. is spending our tax dollars on cloning them.

Can work the other way as well. Got a stuffed Great horned hanging on the wall here. Another owl saw him through the window and took offense. KABOOM. Assuming it was mating season.

Grizz

In my chicken coop I have a mesh roof + a ficus tree overtop shading it. The chickens kept jumping up + eating the ficus leaves. I threw a rubber snake up there + that stopped the problem.

Well the old net-over-the-windows wasn't foolproof. The fool, a female hummingbird, managed to do herself in despite my efforts to save her life. I don't have a Plan-B.

I'm batting 1.000. Two hummingbirds seen in my yard this year; two dead hummingbirds.

Birds and animals get used to stuff. Here there is a Price Chopper Supermarket .The letter on the sign stickout and form a shelf birds like to be.So they put out a plastic owl. It never moved so the birds ignored it !! Funny to see !

quote:

Originally posted by Kensco:
Well the old net-over-the-windows wasn't foolproof. The fool, a female hummingbird, managed to do herself in despite my efforts to save her life. I don't have a Plan-B.

I'm batting 1.000. Two hummingbirds seen in my yard this year; two dead hummingbirds.

Save them in the freezer and after the fall when they migrate through and you will likely have multiple more victims, you can have a hummingbird dinner.

I'm thinking it would be like eating crawfish. Better have a sack full.

Make a curry.

I'm beginning to think it's personal. I believe wildlife is trying to get even for all the death, havoc, and carnage I wrecked on my furry and feathered friends in my youth (and during my not so "youth"). Yesterday a squirrel tried to jump through my office glass door. He bounced up and took off. Today it was a small cottontail. The bunny got back to his feet and tried it again. He had a real evil look in his eye.

I'm pretty sure the bastards are after me. Word apparently gets around. I've armed myself, and asked my wife to take care of anything that needs to be done outside today. She sided with the bunny.

I don't like the way this is shaping-up.

I'm going to have to do something different. I had a juvenile Red-Bellied Woodpecker do a kamikaze run this morning. Killed herself deader than a hammer. I may try to figure how to rig the net 12" from the window. Obviously 3" isn't doing any good.

Move the feeders so the bird's perspective is changed.

Watched a Shrike once chase a bird into a picture window to catch it.

Grizz

I had a red-tailed hawk do the same thing. Dive bombed the feeder, carved a house finch out of the chaos, hemmed it up on the back porch against the windows, then carried it back to its nest. A pretty awesome display.

I couldn't change the perspective much and still see the feeders, so I found a way to move the net six foot from the window and not look ridiculous. So far no one hung in the net. A few ricochets and rim shots. Maybe I've found the answer.

This thread seems to be for the birds, so I'll add a few comments and questions that I hope can be answered. I have hummingbird feeders and unlike videos I've seen where they share a feeder, the hummers here are territorial and fight over the feeders. Perhaps a different species? I had two feeders about 10 feet apart on my front porch. Within last week, I added a third feeder about 20 feet away. My next door neighbor had one feeder and he added two more. It is late into the season, but we are getting many more birds than before. Would have thought what was here already would be it. Most of the birds are gray and some have a black head. I had thought the black headed ones were males. Recently we had a one time visit of a reddish orange bird. Someone said it might be all the other birds are female. I don't know, but I read up on hummingbirds and the males don't help with nest building, caring for the young or setting on the eggs. This would make me think they might have bred some other place and only the females come here to raise their young.
I also have purple martin houses, and if you are a bird lover and don't have a martin house, get one. Lots of work, but worth it.
Another bird question. Ducks are one of the few species of animals that rape. Have seen them do it. Two or three drakes team up and have seen them hold her head underwater while their buddy does the duty. We have a park couple blocks away that had tame white ducks. Some mallards took up full time residency and now we have mixed ducks. Don't know if from rape or consensual. Makes me wonder how all the different species of ducks remain pure in the wild? I know blue quail and bob Whites will intermingle.

Carpetman,In order of your comments;Putting up several hummingbird feeders will help but not totally eliminate the friction,envision any two nations of a different color in the human scene.EVERYONE should put up a Martin house;bat houses are'nt bad either. They are the primary eaters of the mosquitoes,which was bad before but potentially fatal now.Now as to the ducks....I used to raise chickens + Muscovy ducks. One day the rooster decided to peck out the eye of the young muscovy drake. Life went on,the rooster grew + remembered the drake.After he came of age he would chase the rooster around the yard (roosters are fast but have no staying power) until he caught him;then he would fuck him,over + over. That poor rooster,every time he came into the yard his neck was swivelling,where is he,where is he.And he would run him down every time + deal with him like a single shot .410.Barnyard humor (not for him).

As I mentioned before, the first two hummingbirds to show up this year (two females) both killed themselves against the windows. I started seeing a female a month ago and just today I saw two at the feeder at the same time, and later a single. So I know I have at least two hummingbirds now and the one appeared to be a juvenile.

As to being territorial, my males sure were. Last year I could play hummingbird sounds on my iPhone and immediately get strafed by a male ruby-throated. (I occasionally see a black-chinned hummingbird, but mostly ruby throated.) He hovered within 6" of my face once, just to let me know he wasn't happy.

That reddish-orange hummingbird you saw is interesting. It could be a Rufous hummingbird. I've never seen one yet. Their migration route is too far west of us. The edge might include San Angelo.

I was leaving my feeder out from March to November, but I've decided I'm going to change to April 1st to October 1st.

By the way, since moving my net six feet from the windows, I've had no deaths to report, and no birds have gotten tangled in the net either.

Norman--Reports of yesteryears would guess martins ate 2-10 thousand mosquitoes a day. Then someone did a study of the stomach content of martins that died and decided they don't eat many mosquitoes. I'm guessing this study was done on baby martins that died in the nest. I wouldn't think they would have very many if any adults to check. My theory is that adult martins have about 5 hungry babies to feed and feeding them one mosquito at a time would be out of the question, so they feed them larger insects. But for the adult, their meal is mosquitoes. I have noticed that when the martins are in town, there are fewer mosquitoes and then around August when the martins go back to South America, we have more mosquitoes. I've never had a bat house, but I think I'd like one.
Those muscovy ducks sure are ugly. I had one when I was a kid.

I'm curious about bat houses. A friend has just put one up at her place of business. I don't really think I have a good place to mount one.

I gave up on the Purple Martin idea because it did seem like a lot of work.

I have a hummingbird feeder up in the back yard but don't seem to get many hummers--maybe they are not as prevalent in Florida?

But when we lived out in the country just outside Atlanta, we had scores of them. I put up 4 feeders in one tree near the house, and there were so many you could hear them from the back porch, 20 feet away.

But they fought each other like crazy! I guess they are territorial. When one would stick its beak in a feeder, another would zoom in and chase him off. They were like miniature dive-bombers.

One thing I learned about feeding hummers is that you don't need to buy commercial nectar. A 50/50 mix of water & regular old sugar is just fine, and no red food color is needed, either. If you have hummers they will find the food.

I had a large back porch and hung 6 hummingbird feeders. It seem that a male hummer would assume control of one feeder and would defend it vigorously. He would be using it or perched nearby. The females could and would use any of the feeders. Even when there were several of us sitting on the porch, the hummers would totally ignore us as they zoomed around and fought.
IIRQ my ratio of sugar to water was 1 to 4 or maybe 1 to 3.

We had a real strange event yesterday. I got home from playing golf and my wife told me a hummingbird was "trapped" on the back porch. I went to look, and a female, or probably a juvenile was buzzing back and forth against the ceiling of the porch, behind the net I had hung 6' from the back windows. She said the hummer had been flying non-stop for the past four hours. If the hummer had dropped down no more than two feet she / it could have escaped through one of two openings that are 3' wide by 16' tall. The situation was ridiculous. We watched it for another few hours zipping back and forth; never landing. Finally I got a tall ladder out, and a fish net and tried to end the saga. No luck. It evaded me and just seemed to get more frantic. I watched a little golf and the Cowboy game, then checked on the hummer again. Still zooming back and forth within two feet of freedom. I decided maybe my leaf blower might push her the right direction. I got the ladder back out and went to work. No luck. The hummer acted like she was trying to fly through a storm. I told my wife we were just going to have to sit back and let nature run its course.

It now had been flying for about twelve hours. After dark, I thought I would check one more time. Lo and behold, it was sitting on a 2" ledge, seemingly asleep. I got the ladder and the fish net back out and tried to trap it against the wall. The plan didn't work, but the hummer also didn't move. I figured it was dead. I got rid of the net, climbed higher, and picked the hummer up in my hand. It was squirming. I took it away from the house and tried to perch it on a small limb in a redbud tree. Comically,it swung upside down. I tried it again, and it stayed upright the second time; seemingly asleep. I took some photos and watched its heart pounding in its chest. I checked on it a half hour latter and it was still sitting upright, "asleep" and its heartbeat had slowed significantly.

This morning I got up and went out to check on it. She was gone. Not in the tree. Not under the tree. Gone. I'm going to take that as a good sign.

Hopefully so.

...and the carnage continues. I was in my office at home today, and "Blam!". By now I knew what that meant. I looked at the back windows and sure enough found one with enough "bug juice" running down it and a few feathers stuck in the bug juice to know I had a body somewhere in the vicinity outside. Sure enough, there he was, a Cedar Waxwing sitting there stunned. I'm sure he'll die.

Last week it was a Northern Cardinal. We didn't find the body. What we found was a perfect image of a head-on collision dusted into the glass, showing head and top-knot, body, both wings in flight, and tail as it folded into the glass. Must have been a high-speed collision.

Funny thing is, after hanging a net across the four windows killing all the birds, the birds have moved fifteen foot east and started pounding that window.

We have had one bird fly under the net and knock himself out. It was a yellow-bellied sapsucker. I went out, took his picture, and waited. About five minutes later he came to, and flew away.

I'm bring this back up just in case any of you want to go out and look at any wild birds. I'm sure I'll have them all dead by the end of the season.

Get a Cat?