Collisions with glass buildings and windows kill an estimated 600 million birds annually in the US alone. Architectural and planning solutions can dramatically reduce this toll.
Bird-glass collisions cause both immediate death and prolonged suffering in birds that are stunned but not killed. Injured birds often die hours or days later from internal injuries or predation. The solution is largely an architectural and planning problem: bird-friendly design from the outset is far cheaper than retrofitting, and guidelines exist from the American Bird Conservancy and RSPB. Building codes in some jurisdictions now mandate bird-safe glazing for new construction — a model that should spread globally.