Survey of Bird/Window Collisions at Utah State University-Brigham City

When birds fly at full speed into the highly reflective glass windows of human structures, death is often the outcome. This research investigates the impact of architecture on bird population through a specific case study. Bird/window collisions claim from around 350 million to over 1 billion birds per year (Kahle, Flannery, & Dumbacher, 2016). Studies have shown that window surface area (Borden, Lockhart, Jones, & Lyons, 2011) can increase incidents of bird-window collisions. In 2015, Utah State University –Brigham City campus finished their new Classroom and Student Services building which features large windows and an interior tree that can be seen from outside. In 2017, we were prompted to start investigating what impact our new building was having on the local bird population. We hypothesized that our building has a significant negative impact because many of the previously-researched factors correlating to high bird deaths are present