(PhysOrg.com) -- A new bird-friendly glass has been developed that could prevent the deaths and serious injuries of countless birds that fly at high speed into glass windows.
Birds do not see transparent glass, but are misled by the landscape reflected in the window or seen through it into thinking their way is clear of obstacles. Stickers attached to the glass have been shown to have almost no effect, and have even been taken off the market in Switzerland. Stickers are only really effective if they cover a significant portion of the glass.
A new product, called Ornilux Mikado glass, addresses the issue. The insulating glass was developed by German company Arnold Glas and is glass sheeting with a special ultraviolet (UV) reflective coating that is almost invisible to the human eye, but looks like a spider's web to birds. Birds are able to see a broader spectrum of wavelengths than humans, and can easily see the UV lines on the coating.
The glass is claimed to reduce bird collisions by 76%. The spider web design is just barely visible to the human eye when the glass is viewed against a backlight, but ordinarily does not spoil the view, and the coating makes no reduction in the glass's transparency. The product was named after the game Mikado or pick-up sticks, since the pattern bears a resemblance to the game.
The glass was developed by Arnold Glas in conjuction with the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology, and was tested on 19 species of garden birds in a flight tunnel at the Radolfzell Bird Sanctuary. Wild birds were captured and released into the flight tunnel, where they could choose to fly towards a sheet of plain glass or a sheet of Ornilux glass. Of the 108 test flights, 82 of the birds flew towards the plain glass and avoided the Ornilux.
Ornilux Mikado is the latest version of bird-friendly insulating glass. The first installation consisted of 152 sheets of Ornilux Mikado's predecessor, the Ornilux SB 1, for the 250 square meter glass facade of an enclosed swimming pool in Plauen, Germany, during its modernization in early 2006.
Arnold Glas, based in Merkendorf, Germany, recently won an International design award, the Design Zentrum Nordrhein Westfalen, in Essen, Germany, for the bird-friendly glass.
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TheGazzelle on May 15th, 2020 at 21:00 UTC »
I work in the glass industry. Pretty much every single glass manufacturer has a version of this. New York City has instituted that all buildings over 40’ tall must have bird safe glass, so this is becoming industry standard. From an aesthetic point of view (I visited two bird safe manufacturers in England and Germany a couple months ago) they still aren’t that high quality aesthetically in my opinion. I also worry about bird frit causing disorientation from people looking out from the interior.
yakshack on May 15th, 2020 at 17:37 UTC »
I grew up in the woods and one time our neighbor, while foraging for feathers (she was a hippy), she scared a grouse that was chilling (nesting maybe?) in the leaves.
It flew up and into our living room window. Broke through 2 panes of glass and continued to ping into walls and rooms in its confused, injured state. We know this because our neighbor used the spare key to go rescue it and found blood splats everywhere it had bounced as well as feathers and shit, my god the bird shit.
Little dude didn't make it and neighbor tried to clean up the best she could before we got home, as did we once we did get back, but we were still finding random feathers in the house weeks later.
saliczar on May 15th, 2020 at 17:01 UTC »
My old house had large sliding glass doors. There was a cardinal that would fly into it daily. It'd slam into the glass then twitch on the ground for a few minutes. I think it was its way of getting high.