How to easily prevent birds from striking your windows

How to easily prevent birds from striking your windows.

Preventing bird-window collision is one of the easiest and least costly things that any homeowner can do.  First, any preventative measure has to be on the outside of the window, not the inside. Glass treatment will help protect birds from window collision. For a homeowner, large window surfaces such as picture windows and sliding glass doors are easily made bird-friendly with some new products we carry here at the shop.

There’s nothing like a beautiful view out of a clear glass window from inside our home. Glass lets sunshine and light into our homes and offers us a chance to connect to our surroundings. Catching a fox darting across the lawn, watching a nuthatch climb a tree, seeing a Pileated Woodpecker enter its roosting hole before nightfall, discovering a fledgling Barred Owl screeching its location in a nearby tree – these sights thrill us, and we’ve done it all from inside our home.

Stepping outside our home and looking back at our windows, we can see why birds crash into glass. Birds do not perceive the glass as a physical barrier because it reflects the garden, trees or sky – it’s a path to somewhere. If you have screens on your double hung windows, they’re good not only for preventing insects from coming in, but they also break up the reflections that would confuse your yard birds.

We need to make our glass visible.

We have been reading for years about nighttime perils for migrating birds (most birds migrate at night) – bright lights and sheer windows. There are groups of birders and ornithologists who have regularly patrolled sidewalks outside of buildings and skyscrapers at dawn to collect deceased birds. Gruesome work, but because of this action we now know that literally thousands of birds can die in one “night flight” collision event. (read the story about McCormick Place convention center in Illinois, 2023). Ornithologists estimate that nearly a billion birds die from window collision annually in the United States alone.

Fortunately, bird deaths from window collision are largely preventable by implementing one or more of the bird friendly products available in our shop, and in 2024 McCormick Place invested over a million dollars to make their glass visible to birds. This one act reduced collisions and mortality there by 95%!

Here are our favorites.

1. WindowAlert static cling UV reflective decals are a top seller, and there’s a new design we like called Modern Dots that contains 30 1.25″ round dots that are easily applied to the outside of your windows. We also sell a package of 5 decorative static cling decals called Leaf Medley by WindowAlert. Clear instructions and advice for best adhesion and placement are included with each package. We also offer an easy to apply WindowAlert UV Liquid that contains 1 oz. of liquid in an easy to apply sponge topped applicator bottle.

2. A company called Feather Friendly, in business since 2006, also offers two do-it-yourself options for homeowners. Both are excellent, easy to apply (with a little prep), and very effective at cutting down on and eliminating window strikes. Feather Friendly worked with the owners of McCormick Place, and the result has been a 95% reduction in bird mortality.

According to Feather Friendly, “glass must be treated with a high-contrast hue, like our gray-white markers on the first surface side (exterior surface), which stand out against the green and brown shades of the habitat.”

We have two Feather Friendly options, a 100′ roll that covers 16 square feet and a triple package equalling 300’ of coverage for more or larger windows.

3. New to the shop in 2026, are 4 offerings from a female owned US based company called Window Gems. There are 3 beautiful bird designs and 1 fun and effective design simply called Dots Window Gems.

These are uniquely made of sturdy, years-long lasting vinyl. One side of the vinyl is flat and sticks to your window (no adhesive). The other side has unique ridges that reflect ambient light so that birds see the window and avoid it.

Window Gems are washable and reusable. In an east, west or southern window, they can cast rainbow hues on the interior of your home, hence the name “gems”. On a north-facing window they are still pretty.

We can all do our part to make glass visible to birds and easily prevent birds from striking our windows. Every little bit helps, do it!