


And now let's move from welfare reform to architectural reform. Modern architecture involves a lot of glass. But glass kills millions of birds every year, when they collide with windows. Biologists say as more glass buildings go up, more birds are dying.

NPR's Christopher Joyce has the first of two reports on what a group of scientists and architects are doing about that, and he begins at a bird preserve in Pennsylvania.

CHRISTOPHER JOYCE, BYLINE: Today at the Powdermill Avian Research Center in western Pennsylvania, scientists are catching birds. Luke DeGroote is patrolling a mist net that runs for hundreds of yards through a dense, wet forest.

LUKE DEGROOTE: It's a very fine mesh, and that's why the birds run into it. And they, essentially, will fly towards the net and fall into these pockets.

JOYCE: Biologists normally retrieve the birds, and then mark them with metal bands to follow their migrations. Today, though, the catch is for Christine Sheppard. Sheppard is an ornithologist with the American Bird Conservancy. Her mission is to stop birds from flying into glass. A lot of them do, and they die.

CHRISTINE SHEPPARD: Our best estimate is 100 million to a billion.

JOYCE: A billion dead birds a year, in North America. That's just a guesstimate.

SHEPPARD: Almost anybody you talk to has seen a bird hit a building, or has heard a bird hit. The fact that so many people are seeing this, means it's happening all the time.

JOYCE: Sheppard says birds don't see the way we do. Most don't have good depth perception beyond their beaks. They have to get relatively close to an object to see much detail, or distinguish it from background. What they do see in glass, is sky or trees.

SHEPPARD: Reflection is definitely a problem.

JOYCE: Reflections that make it seem as if there's no building there; just more sky and clouds and trees. Even when there's no reflection, glass confuses birds.

SHEPPARD: The other thing that happens is that birds will try to fly through glass to something on the other side. And this can be a planted atrium; it could be a potted plant.

JOYCE: So Sheppard has set up an experiment at Powdermill. She's putting birds in a tunnel that sits in a grassy part of the reserve. It looks like a house trailer. Two panes of glass enclose one end. There's regular plate glass on one side; next to it is a pane of specially coated glass. Sheppard is testing various coatings on - and in - glass that make them look visible to birds, but not to people. A fine-mesh net just in front of the glass, keeps the birds from actually hitting it.


JOYCE: Luke DeGroote comes to the tunnel with the morning's catch - catbirds.

DEGROOTE: And they get their name from that cat-like sound that they make.

JOYCE: The birds are in cloth bags. DeGroote wears several, tied on a string around his neck. Sheppard's assistant, Cara Menzel, takes one and gives it a number.

CARA MENZEL: Four-nine-nine-three-one.

JOYCE: Then she gently puts it in the tunnel. She films which glass window it flies toward.

MENZEL: Direct left.

JOYCE: The bird flies directly to the left - toward the regular glass. The glass on the right has a pattern of lines painted on the inside. It's a material that reflects ultraviolet light. Birds see well in the ultraviolet range. Presumably, they see the pattern as something solid. The human eye can barely make it out. But Menzel notes that when the sun sets, it's a whole new problem.

MENZEL: Especially during these big migrations, where birds are coming through in larger numbers. And a lot of them fly over at night. So the lighting with the glass, at night, can play a big factor in it.

JOYCE: Biologists believe birds are attracted to the lights inside buildings. Sheppard has studied birds all her life. She says the real difficulty is trying to think like one; to figure out why they do what they do. There's been some research in Europe, but not much here.

SHEPPARD: Not enough people know about it, and it's really important.

JOYCE: Why is it important?

SHEPPARD: Many people believe that - you know, birds have an intrinsic right not be killed. Birds are seed dispersers; they eat tons of bugs. So every bird that's killed on a building, is an ecological service that we lose.

JOYCE: Several cities in the U.S. and Canada either have, or are considering, new building codes that require bird-friendly materials. And there are some quick fixes for windows - decals, or sheets of patterned plastic that attach to glass. But ideally, biologists and architects want solutions that people can't see, that will be standard products in buildings, and that won't cost an arm and a leg.

Christopher Joyce, NPR News.


INSKEEP: Tomorrow, we visit an architectural firm leading the search for bird-friendly buildings.






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