It's bad enough that birds are threatened by habitat loss, pesticides and cats. But hundreds of millions of them die every year flying into windows. It's heartbreaking.
Finally one company is doing something about it. Germany-based Glaswerke Arnold (Arnold Glass in English) has come up with a simple solution. They've patterned glass with a special ultraviolet reflecting material that the bird can see and which humans cannot (above left: what humans see; above right: what birds see). The inspiration comes from the orb-web spider, which weaves a UV-reflecting silk into its web to keep birds from flying through.
Arnold Glass has had the glass for awhile now, but recently they worked with the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology to develop a better version and test its efficacy. Studies show that the Ornilux Mikado glass reduced bird strikes up to 75 percent when compared to standard windows.
Unfortunately, birds were hurt while testing this glass. According to an article on Physorg, the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology captured 19 different species of wild birds and released them into a flight tunnel, where a sheet of plain glass was placed next to the a sheet of the Ornilux glass. In 108 flights, 82 birds flew toward the plain glass and avoided the UV-coated pane.
Well, that's a little disheartening. I'm not sure how else the company would have tested the windows, but killing birds to save birds doesn't really resonate with me. Would you buy these windows?
UPDATE: Lisa Welch, a marketing rep from Ventura, Calif.,-based Roeder Windows and Doors, which distributes the windows in the United States wrote saying, "No birds were harmed during this testing." According to Welch, a net placed in front of the test panes arrested the birds' flight before hitting any pane of glass. "All birds were safely released," she said.
Tags: Animals, Green Building, Inventions
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