Worth it. Thank you smart people for saving what birds we can.
i hit a goose with a car once and i still mourn that moment.
I was 20 minutes late to work once. Boss gave me a freebie when I told her that I was playing crossing guard for a family of ducks crossing the road.
I once ran over a rabbit
that’s brilliant
I had to put decals on the bottom of my glass door to keep my dumb dog from bonkin’ his noggin.
FYI, not all bird glass has visible fritting. They also come with UV reflective coatings that are almost transparent to the human eye (unless you’re really close to the glass), e.g.,
Some UV treatments are stripes, others similar to an elongated version of the fritting from OP, and then there’s the camo-stick-like version above. Stripes are the most noticeable to humans.
ETA: From personal experience, the glass is completely transparent from ~2+ meters away, and you have to be very close or staring directly at glare from the sun to see it when <2m away.
ETA2: Someone else shared the Wikipedia article on bird collisions below, but I wanted to take a second to highlight this graph from the article:
If you think bird safe glass is cool, spaying/neutering your cats and keeping them inside or on a leash is waaay cooler.
(This graph doesn’t include indirect causes of death like climate change, deforestation, and pesticide use, but that doesn’t make responsible pet ownership any less cool)
Also note how low wind turbines actually are on that list. The oil industry lives to harp on the number of birds killed by wind turbines, but you never hear them about the much larger number of birds killed by vehicles.
Still worth reducing every number on that list of course, but keep some perspective.
Many of these graphs were made to show that windmills do not really contribute to bird death.
Wait until you figure out how many birds humans kill.
AN OUTSIDE CAT IS A STRAY YOU FEED. THATS NOT YOUR FUCKING CAT. Thats all.
How do these numbers compare to the number of chickens, turkeys, and ducks killed in animal agriculture? I think those are human-related deaths, so it’s a bit odd to me they’re not included. (I would assume they blow these numbers out of the water)
I believe that chickens and other farm birds account for something like 50-60% of all the birds alive at any given time.
With some very hand-wavy maths I’d say its at least a 10x increase. ~50+ billion slaughtered for food vs ~4 billion from outdoor cats. Don’t quote me on that, they’re just the first two numbers I came across.
I’d argue it’s somewhat fair to exclude agriculture from the original chart because the damage cats do to wild bird populations is off the charts and owners should recognise that reality.
If you have a problem with feral cats in an area, find a secluded spot nearby and plant catnip.
You will now have feral cats that are high AF & not killing shit.
I think I read something like 90% of the cat killings come from non-pet cats, and there’s maybe three pets for every four to five strays. Obviously, spay/neuter is the best defense, and on top of that maybe going a step further and trapping your local strays. And unless we start treating stray cats like pests, I’m not sure how doable it is to try to call the population via spay neuter.
And I’ll be honest, I’m less concerned about the mammals deaths, because I’d never be mad at my car for catching mice. Catch mice all day dude.
And if I’m being really honest, I think some birds are real assholes, but maybe that’s a discussion for another day.
I knew it was bad, but its nice to see it in context like this. I love cats, but have never been able to afford them. They’ll ve rescues and be trapped inside ;getting smooshed in my arms.
Thanks.
They’re starting to crack down on cats in my area. They have a curfew. In some districts, they are not allowed outside. There are areas near me where cats are outright banned.
The birds that die near me tend to hit the glass then fall into my dog’s mouth. The cleaner the glass, the more it happens.
The cats have a curfew? Have you met cats?
You can train cats just like many other domesticated animals
If they break curfew, they are captured and kept in cages. They might be forcefully sterilized or even killed via lethal injection.
That’s is certainly something you could do I guess
there are a lot of anti-cat nutcases out there who basically think cats should never be let outside ever. and are trying to change laws to make this vision a reality, under the guise of ‘protecting wildlife’.
not any different than people who wnat to make the entire interet require age verification to ‘protect the children’
it’s stupid but it’s gaining traction because there isn’t any organized resistance to it.
Except we have mountains of undeniable evidence that cats harm birds and other wildlife.
Cats instinctively kill birds and other small rodents. While I certainly see the appeal of outside cats the people arguing based on environmental concerns also have a point.
Additionally you should be really careful letting your cat out as it can get into something and then make you sick as a result
Also, bird kills are almost all feral cats, not Fluffy. Odd how that’s never brought up in these discussions.
When they say Vehicles i bet a LOT of that is airplanes. Bird strikes are more common than you’d think.
The graph’s message is clear: immediately dismantle all wind turbines and ramp up clean coal!
/s
Just make a bunch Beta-M units for household use
Buht them be burd blenders!!! 😵💫
“Beautiful, clean coal.”
That’s blowing my mind that birds, masters of the sky - a realm to which they can easily escape to where few can follow, are such a frequent snack for cats, who under usual circumstances don’t often fly. Cats are like ninjas.
There’s that time of the year when birds land, make nests, lay eggs and have to hang around to feed their young. That’s a very vulnerable time for them. Make sure your bird house and bird feeder are cat proof.
Gotta land sometime, bitch 🐈⬛
Cats are expert hunters
they aren’t. only a small percentage of cats live up to the ‘serial killer’ reputation, someting like less than 10%. most cats can’t catch shit, and what they do catch are easy prey, like weak/injuried, or baby animals.
I once took over my neighbour’s cat. He was very scared and timid. Stayed behind the fridge for the first weekend. Took half a year before he was comfortable enough to be petted. Never wanted to go outside. Didn’t even want to go into the stairwell of our building. Until some day it did. I was really proud of his newfound courage. But it was very eager, so I followed it. It went upstairs to the common attic, where I saw a very scared looking pigeon sitting on a box surrounded by way too many feathers.
From that moment on I kept him inside again. Apparently even that super timid scared cat will kill breeding pigeons.
If a cat is outside and used to hunting, they are good hunters, I’ve never seen a farmcat that couldn’t catch mice. Frankly, if there are mice and squirrels around, cats rarely bother with birds. If you let a housecat outside, it’ll be a terrible hunter.
It’s almost like practice makes perfect.
Oh til, thanks
I had an indoor/outdoor cat that would catch birds at night, bring them home dead , and play with them.
What a mess.
Next cat would only go out during the day and lay around. He did manage to catch two rats
My cat ran a mouse up my curtain yestetday. Came to bed, there’s a cat just staring up at the wall over my bed… I figured it was greebles, but then the mouse poked it’s head out of the grommets…
Needless to say I managed to scare it off the curtain and we teamed up to get it out of the house.
My cats don’t get to go outside. I used to have a free-access catio, but a former cat would bring chipmunks inside and let them go, and once kept a dead squirrel in a box in an unused closet for three days while he ate it (i didn’t actually think to look in the closet he kept going into, cats are weird and do weird things…), so…. That’s not allowed anymore.
My parents at would do the same with chipmunks.
That cat would also growl at kids waking home from school while sitting inside near the window.
Pretty wild to think these goofy furballs we keep around as pets are apex predators.
I had a cat one time that liked to play fetch. Just like a dog. Never seen anything like it.
they are not apex predators.
cats are prey for larger animals and are often killed my racoons and other stronger animals.
They occasionally get taken by eagles here. Small dogs too.
Yeah, true enough.
I had a cat one time that liked to play fetch. Just like a dog. Never seen anything like it.
I had a cat like that :)
Colorpoint shorthairs (the ones that look like regular cats, not necessarily the over-bread siamese) are known for that sort of behavior. Mine was a cream colorpoint, and basically looked solid white, but “catdog” is how that breed is normally described, because they tend to be wildly friendly and play fetch.
I had a blue point that was a mouse hunter and she was so proud of every kill. She’s do her little proud walk with it in her mouth and everything like, “hey look what I got!”
Not sure house cats count as apex predators because they are also prey animals. A tiger is an apex predator because what eats tigers? But there’s stuff that’ll eat house cats.
Nevertheless house cats are extremely effective at hunting small prey. I had a maine coon that drove my city block’s vole population extinct for a good ten years. Big dude either loved digging or hated voles.
Yeah, that’s true. I got a little excited with my assessment.
I once physically removed a still living bird from my cats clutches and set it free. I saw him get it. Birds are just fucking oblivious. Standing around pecking at the ground and not checking their surroundings.
So all of the windows in NYC look like Eddie Van Halen’s guitar to birds?
Neat.
Ah that explains it. But why would they bother with the dots? Perhaps to make it clear to others that the window is compliant? All the information I can find online seems to suggest that it’s the dots that makes the window visible to the birds.
From the wiki for bird-window collisions:
There are several methods of preventing bird-window strikes. The use of ultraviolet (UV) signals to make windows appear visible to birds, while once one of the most common means of combatting this issue, is no longer recommended by experts. This is because while some birds can see UV light, not all can. Other solutions include window film (as long as it is placed on the exterior of the glass) and ceramic frit glass (glass with fritdots).[30] Windows can also be covered with decals spaced no more than 5 cm horizontally or 10 cm vertically to prevent collisions.[31]
I had assumed it was cheaper to do dots, but it’s actually just more broadly effective. That’s a better reason :)
Dots are cheaper than UV filters and easier to apply retroactively. Both have the same effect of creating a visible obstruction for birds to discourage strikes.
Dots and UV are different solutions to the same problem, they both make the glass visible to birds. Its one or the other usually, not both.
I wonder what percent of those cats are strays.
They’re pretty much all feral. Our well-fed house cats are killing at anything like that frequency.
I wonder what percent of those cats are strays.
the vast majority. feral cats are about 50-65% of the cat population, but people take stats like this and demonize their neighbors who let the cat sit on the porch outside.
i was banned from reddit 5 years ago for posting a picture of my cat chilling on my porch, because the anti-cat nutjobs reported me to admin for ‘inciting violence’. it’s frequent that in the past few years when photo see my cat outside chillin’ or even a photo of him in my backyard chill, they ream me out about how I am a anti-bird Nazi.
my cat has never killed a bird. he killed a couple of baby rabbits which were in my garden.
Where do you think feral cats come from? They are domestic cats which live outside, sometimes by choice, sometimes because they are abandoned, and sometimes because they are born to an outdoor/feral car.
Feral cats come from other feral cats. They don’t come from domestic cats in homes.
Same with feral hogs and other feral animal populations.
You need to look up what the word “feral” means.
They aren’t called “wild” cats. Because “wild” animals are where they are supposed to be. In an environment they evolved into.
“Feral” animals are where they aren’t supposed to be. Introduced by humans. As a result of domesticated animals being left to fend for themselves in an environment they didn’t evolve into.
Literally the first sentence on wikipedia, when looking up feral hogs: “A feral pig (Sus scrofa) is a domestic pig which has gone feral”.
That doesn’t mean they’re all escaped or abandoned pets. Maybe their ancestors were, but cats breed, and some places have significant populations of breeding feral cats that have never been inside a home.
Your point being?
No. There are no native cats of this species outside of the area around Turkey (and even there I don’t know if there is anymore, but that’s where the housecat came from). Any feral domestic cat you see came from a pet at some point in time. They were not just there as a feral animal to start with.
right and all human beings that aren’t in africa are invasive species! we should kill all the humans who don’t live in africa!
Impressively stupid. 👏
Do you think humans should have an obligation to minimize their impact on their environment? If yes, cats are included in that, and cats aren’t capable of making that decision.
Edit: also holy whataboutism! What the fuck was that about? It has nothing to do with the comment except that cats are involved.
Where did all those stray feral cats come from?
My grandparents lived near an estuary and had to put the dot stickers on their big, west-facing sliding glass doors to stop the high-speed waterfowl crashes that would happen every month or so. While I certainly understand it’s best for the ducks, one of my oldest memories is of hearing a BANG! And looking out the door to see a disoriented duck staggering around on the deck before shaking it off and flying away unsteadily.
Many birds die afterwards by cerebral bleeding.
I used to clean windows on big buildings. One time I was sent this new building that had just been put up in the span of about a year. They obviously didn’t give a shit about any birds because when I was on their 7 floor patio one day I counted about 20 dead birds.
Bird–window collisions (also known as bird strikes after the aviation term or as window strikes) are a problem in both low- and high-density areas worldwide. Birds strike glass because reflective or transparent glass is often invisible to them.[1] Previous research estimated that between 100 million and 1 billion birds are killed by collisions in the United States annually,[2] but a 2024 study on the survival rate of bird-building collision victims indicates that previous research was vastly underestimating the number of deaths caused by collisions, and in actuality well over 1 billion birds die from collisions in the United States every year.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bird–window_collisions
The ducks that were able to walk away were lucky, probably not flying at full speed yet. And they were still probably concussed afterwards.
Dad, were you flying home drunk again?
*takes a swig* Fucken’ Huumans!You could always tell they were pissed off. Visibly confused. But definitely pissed too.
when they start leaving little presents on your doorstep, that’s how you know
“look at all those bugs just sitting there! I’m going in”
You can also buy strips of those dots to put on existing windows. I have two glass doors on the back of my house that birds flew into so I spent an afternoon applying them and it’s decreased enough that I haven’t noticed it happening again, at least. They have been up for a few years without wear.
So we can just stick on googly eyes?
Cool, you can play games with these dots.
Is it just spotted or are there other features (that I can’t see)?
Some of them have some different kind of shading between layers of glass, something about how birds see colors. Different designs etched in the glass. I’m trying to remember back to a presentation I sat through on it.
One part that I do remember is that it’s not all about skyscrapers, and that it’s just like the first three or four stories. Skyscrapers tend to get the most attention because you don’t get a ton of low rise buildings with curtain walls of full glass.
It says 'fuck off’ in 7 different bird languages
But is it considered a ‘dick move’ in bird culture?
What I’d like to know is why did they write it in penguin?
Wowwwwww.
It’s fligots like you that make integration into the broader avian society so difficult for penguins.
While I understand where you’re coming from, let me ask you a question. When’s the last time you tried to get into Club Penguin?
bird law is not governed by reason
It’s made out of birds. Is it really worth it?
Iirc, The dotted design is the only one that has proven effectiveness.
Bird stickers e.g. are largely ineffective.
It’s fascinating that it’s only some dots, and that it’s apparently enough.
