How to Stop Birds Flying Into Your Windows

Having wildlife in the garden is lovely, educational for children and helps make you feel a little bit happier that other creatures can thrive in your garden. However, one challenge for a feathered friends is knowing what a window is and how to avoid them!

Here at Good to be Home, we try to look out for all of Mother Nature’s creatures, so we thought we’d give you some advice to ensure there’s no injuries. A study in the US suggested around 1 billion birds die every year from flying into a window, so it’s tips we all need.

Day and Night Crashes

There’s a couple of reasons that birds will fly into windows. The reasons depend whether it’s day or night. During the day, a window is a reflective surface, so birds flying towards the window may see the reflection of garden shrubbery, trees or foliage and think it’s a safe flying zone.

Birds occasionally see their own reflection in a window and will attack it, but this doesn’t normally end with a fatality.

At night time it is nocturnal birds that are at risk, often flying towards windows with a light on in the room. Although the reasons for them being lured in by light is unknown, it is a big problem as the light can disorientate these birds causing collisions.

Image source

Improving the Birds View

Large glass doors such as bi-folds or French doors and large windows are the main culprits for such incidents. If you stand near where the birds often feed in your garden and you look at your doors and windows, what can you see? If you have a reflection of your garden, that’s likely to be what the birds are seeing.

You may be scratching your head thinking how you can help them, but there’s some simple tricks you can do without changing your windows. If you have a long garden, try putting the bird feeders as far from your windows as possible.

Alternatively, put them closer to your windows or doors (about 3 feet away) as the birds won’t be able to reach top speed and hurt themselves if they do decide your window is a good direction to fly.

Related: How to Help Injured Birds

If it has proven to be a major issue and you’re windows are a regular flight path for birds, you can take more drastic action by putting up screening or netting, about 3 inches from the glass. Make sure it’s taught enough to bounce birds off without hurting them.

You could cover the glass with a one way film that allows you to see out, but it makes the window opaque from outside, preventing reflections and confusion.

External shutters are another option, as you can adjust them to let natural light flood into your home, but prevents birds believing it’s a safe flying zone. A slightly cheaper option could be internal blinds or having cottage bars in your windows as they help break up the reflection.

Hopefully, this advice keeps the flying wildlife in your garden safe and prevents any injuries. Do you have any advice on protecting birds and other wildlife in your garden? We’d love to hear your tips – send them to us on Facebook or Twitter.

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