Change Your Soap to Stop Birds Hitting Windows

Change Your Soap to Stop Birds Hitting Windows

At some point, we've all accidentally run into a glass door. Most people who do this don't get hurt, except for the loud and awkward "thunk." But birds are more likely to get hurt. According to Ornithological Applications, between 365 and 988 million birds (median = 599 million) are killed in the U.S. each year when they hit buildings. About 56% of these deaths happen at low-rise buildings and 44% happen at homes. This doesn't always kill them, but it could. It's too bad that the real death rate may be even higher. If you want to keep birds from hitting your windows, a simple and effective way to do so is to put soap on the glass.

You probably have a dry bar of soap at home that you can use for this easy bird safety trick. Use soap to make patterns on the outside of your window. Use dots, slashes, squiggles, or any other creative shapes, but make sure there aren't any gaps bigger than 2 inches. After a lot of rain or cleaning the windows, you need to put the soap back on. So, this gives bird lovers a good reason to clean their windows less often. If you don't think you can clean your windows all year, try doing it in the spring from March 1 to June 15 and in the fall from August 15 to November 30, when birds are migrating.

Putting soap on windows makes birds safer.

Birds won't fly into your window unless they are really interested in how you decorate your home. Birds don't see glass very well. People can tell that there is glass even when it is very clear by looking at the window frame and other visual clues. Birds, on the other hand, see reflections as real things. People might try to get to a beautiful tree that is reflected in the glass, but they might accidentally hit your window instead. The lines on the soap must be less than 2 inches apart; if they are too small, they will just look like things to get around. It is important to make it look like something is blocking their flight. The reason for putting aluminum foil on windows is also based on a love of birds.

You can see this when you put soap on the outside of the window, but what if you need to bird-proof a window that you can't get to from the outside?

You can see this when you put soap on the outside of the window, but what if you need to bird-proof a window that you can't get to from the outside? Painting a picture on the inside of your window is better than not decorating it at all, even if it doesn't work as well. To see if your soap drawing inside really keeps birds away, look at it from the outside every two hours, starting in the morning. Birds should be able to see the soap most of the time, which shows that it works.