Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

We may all have heard of stories about airports introducing various means to drive away birds in order to prevent accidents caused by birds hitting airplanes, or major flight accidents caused by bird impacts.

Photo of a US military helicopter damaged by a bird impact. Military-Air Combat Command, but in fact, in daily life, birds also hit the windows of cars and houses, and die as a result-- hitting these windows doesn't cause a big accident, so it doesn't attract our attention, but in fact, birds die as a result of hitting windows. It has become the human impact that causes the largest number of bird deaths after domestic cat culling.

According to research, domestic cats kill 1.34 billion birds a year in the United States, and 365-988 million birds die as a result of hitting glass windows. According to research, a bird killed by hitting a glass window / pixabay. In Canada, the death toll is between 1600 and 42 million. Although there are no data from other parts of the world, according to data from the two countries, at least billions of birds die each year.

The reason why birds hit the glass window is mainly related to the nature of the glass itself and the lighting at night. Whether it is the bird's eye, the human eye, or the eyes of many other animals, it is difficult to tell the transparent glass window from the air-how many people have hit the glass door or window? At this time, if there are green plants in the glass window, birds are likely to bump into each other.

Birds will be attracted by the indoor green plants and hit the window / rawpixel. When the sun is good, the reflection of the glass is also very good. At this time, it will reflect the green plants outside the window, such as street trees, or reflect a blue sky. At this time, birds will naturally bump into the true and false.

Birds cannot distinguish between true and false reflections on glass / wikipedia at night, migrating birds may be guided by starlight, but serious light pollution in modern cities may interfere with birds' judgment, causing them to lose their sense of direction and fly to the light. The light is often the place where the glass windows are dense, so birds hit the windows frequently.

The impact is so harmful to birds that most birds may die from intracranial hemorrhage, sometimes even hard skulls. A small number of birds may survive the impact, but die in the following hours to days due to broken beak or intracranial hemorrhage. However, since the carcasses of birds may be cleaned up by cleaners, carried away by stray cats or rotted in the green belt in the corner, birds that do not die on the spot may die elsewhere because they fly away, so we seldom see corpses.

Most birds die of intracranial hemorrhage after hitting windows / USGS in other places outside North America, the phenomenon of birds hitting windows has not attracted much attention, and scientists are generally more concerned about the problem of bird strike prevention at airports as we mentioned at the beginning of the article. However, according to the results of North American research, the biggest victims of birds hitting the window are actually migrating birds, and four of the nine largest bird migration zones in the world pass through China, so the situation in China may also be extremely serious.

China is an important bird migration zone map / CCTV news screenshot, but scientists have found that if we master the law of impact, we have a way to minimize bird casualties at a lower cost. Studies in North America have found that bird collisions are obviously seasonal, mainly in the migration and breeding seasons, which are generally the most frequent in spring and autumn.

Contrary to popular perception, in places with high urbanization, the probability of bird impact is relatively low (although the total number of impacts is also quite large), but in urban-rural fringe areas, or in small towns with better greening, the impact frequency is a little higher. Scientists speculate that this may be because birds living in cities have learned to coexist with reinforced concrete, but in urban-rural fringes or small towns, windows are more likely to reflect the surrounding vegetation because of the high rate of greening. naturally, it is more likely to attract birds to hit. In particular, the existence of trees within 5 meters around the building will greatly increase the impact probability of birds.

In addition, the height, floor space and glass area of the building also affect the impact of birds. High-rise buildings with more than 10 stories have relatively few impacts, while medium-and low-rise buildings with 1-to 10-storey stories account for most of the impact incidents. the larger the area and the larger the area of glass, it is easier to cause impact, so around those large shopping malls, it is often easier to find dead bird carcasses.

Modern commercial plazas are often huge building plans / wikipedia with glass curtain walls on the outside. Finally, the study of night light shows that the light intensity in the room at night can also affect birds. When the light intensity in the building at night increases from 50% to 100%, the frequency of bird collisions in spring increases by 6 to 10 times.

Bright lights are deadly traps for birds / Pxhere so, if summed up simply, readers living on the middle and lower floors with a high green rate may need to pay attention to the need to make some small preparations in the spring and autumn to prevent birds from dying from crashing into the window. During the day, removing the potted plants near the window is the easiest way; some foreign experts believe that a film that can reflect ultraviolet rays can be affixed on the outside of the glass, because human beings cannot see ultraviolet rays with the naked eye, but most birds can. In addition, dotted stripes can be affixed to the glass, and the space between the stripes should be no more than 5cm to 10cm, so that even some birds that like to travel through the dense forest will not try to pass through these transparent spaces. At night, no matter how strong the light is, it is enough to draw opaque curtains.

Dotted stickers to prevent birds from hitting windows / wikipedia Resources:

Https://docs.qq.com/doc/DQm1qcVlDWGFIYU5G

This article is from the official Wechat account: bring Science Home (ID:steamforkids). By Shen Mengxi.

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