If you’ve been looking up at the tops of the trees, or watching neighbourhood feeders, you’ve noticed the flitting of birds newly arriving on their spring migration. If you’ve been walking around with open ears, you’ve heard the sweet musical call of the robins and almost-raucous regular trill of the red-winged blackbirds. Spring has arrived and it’s in full swing. And so we must hone our attention on our surroundings (not a hard task!)—while for some us, work begins.

The expansion of urban habitat and housing and mirrored buildings means only one thing to birds: imminent danger. There are three things we all need to take responsibility to do for birds (and this message is so old now that NOT doing something about it is delinquent).

The Top Three things to do are in an Audubon article (Fall of 2015):

1. Put decals, tape, strings, or another form of “frit” on your windows – all windows reflecting trees within 5 storeys of the ground! – so that birds can see them and avoid crashing;
2. Turn off building lights at night, and
3. SPEAK UP about this to everyone who will listen, but building managers and city councils, especially!

I’ve written about bird crashes and the resources to prevent them before, and it’s also happened to me (this story has a good ending, and it’s instructive on what to do if you have a little window-crasher). One even happened to me last week, though I’m persuaded that the little bird was startled and survived:

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