3 ms·

Worth mentioning there are pricier but even more invisible, similar idea solutions. I've got stickers I put on my house and have suggested to clients that are t

by xoa 3y ago

Worth mentioning there are pricier but even more invisible, similar idea solutions. I've got stickers I put on my house and have suggested to clients that are translucent in the visible spectrum but strongly reflect UV. Lots of birds (and in particular songbirds, these are on rural residential buildings with no more than 3 stories so raptors aren't going into them) have receptors for ultraviolet, so to them the stickers look opaque glowing white. They're effective and may be more aesthetic, though again more expensive (they need to be replaced every 6-9 months, the chemical that reflects UV breaks down). Another approach I've used is a sticker that simulates a golden spider web. While not translucent, the thin web look is very subtle, but apparently a lot of birds have evolved to be very hard wired to avoid flying through heavy spider webs so it triggers an avoidance response well. Finally, there are bug screens that have gotten very subtle too (high density thin weave with low visibility materials used in their construction). As well as reducing external reflection, those will just plain act as a softer shock absorber if a bird runs into one. And of course keep out insects, so doing their job anyway. I'll add that I still do have (far fewer) bird hits once in awhile, but the big change seems to be outcome. Before a lot of birds died. Afterwards what seems to happen is the hits still see it at the last moment, and the hits have 99% turned into bellyflops. Not fun for the bird no doubt, but it also isn't lethal, they just fly away. Bird death in my experience is generally caused by broken necks, they fly in head first and their neck snaps and that's it. So even if they swerve as the very last moment, it's still a huge boost in survivability. On a big building it might help to have some nets out of sight below windows though so that birds which are temporarily stunned don't fall all the way to the ground.

dtgriscom 3y ago
The UV stickers sound interesting, but is there a (human-)visual indication that they've stopped working? If not, there'll be a whole lot of useless dots on windows, making owners feel better but not actually helping anything.
- theptip 3y ago
  Presumably you get the auditory indication of birds resuming their collisions with your window.
- xoa 3y ago
  Unless you have a UV camera then no, there is no indication to humans [0]. Though as sibling said, if nothing else you'd have the obvious direct grim evidence if they had failed. But at the same time I've not found it a concern in practice, there's plenty of stuff in a household that simply needs to be replaced/renewed on an annual or semi-annual basis with no particular indicator before failure. Just part of building maintenance. I set an annual calendar notification and roll it into spring/fall cleanup lists along with things like gutter cleaning. They don't just fail at wildly varying rates, it's a straight forward curve of breakdown so when it says "replace these every 6 months" one can just do that. ---- 0: FWIW you can get basic simple monochrome UV-USB 1080p cameras (350-380nm range or so, to get down to 300nm requires much more expensive lenses) to play with for <$250 new, similar to basic low res FLIRs. They can be interesting looks at the world, you can see everything from sunscreen applications to UV patterns on some flowers.
  - gus_massa 3y ago
    A few years ago, my wife was taking photos of spectral lines of a mercury lamp with our normal camera and she noticed an additional line in the photo. It was an UV line that was visible by the camera but not by the eye. [IIRC a Cannon camera, not very expensive or fancy. It was very good taking photos of dark rooms during birthdays.] Edit: Fixed typo IV -> UV
    - p1mrx 3y ago
      > It was an IV line that was visible by the camera but not by the eye. If you can't see infraviolet, consider taking a colorblind test.
      - Intralexical 3y ago
        > infraviolet …Blue?
        callalex 3y ago
        Indigo, the made-up color that only exists to make the acronym slightly pronounceable.

by xoa 3y ago

dtgriscom 3y ago

The UV stickers sound interesting, but is there a (human-)visual indication that they've stopped working? If not, there'll be a whole lot of useless dots on windows, making owners feel better but not actually helping anything.

theptip 3y ago
Presumably you get the auditory indication of birds resuming their collisions with your window.
xoa 3y ago
Unless you have a UV camera then no, there is no indication to humans [0]. Though as sibling said, if nothing else you'd have the obvious direct grim evidence if they had failed. But at the same time I've not found it a concern in practice, there's plenty of stuff in a household that simply needs to be replaced/renewed on an annual or semi-annual basis with no particular indicator before failure. Just part of building maintenance. I set an annual calendar notification and roll it into spring/fall cleanup lists along with things like gutter cleaning. They don't just fail at wildly varying rates, it's a straight forward curve of breakdown so when it says "replace these every 6 months" one can just do that. ---- 0: FWIW you can get basic simple monochrome UV-USB 1080p cameras (350-380nm range or so, to get down to 300nm requires much more expensive lenses) to play with for <$250 new, similar to basic low res FLIRs. They can be interesting looks at the world, you can see everything from sunscreen applications to UV patterns on some flowers.
- gus_massa 3y ago
  A few years ago, my wife was taking photos of spectral lines of a mercury lamp with our normal camera and she noticed an additional line in the photo. It was an UV line that was visible by the camera but not by the eye. [IIRC a Cannon camera, not very expensive or fancy. It was very good taking photos of dark rooms during birthdays.] Edit: Fixed typo IV -> UV
  - p1mrx 3y ago
    > It was an IV line that was visible by the camera but not by the eye. If you can't see infraviolet, consider taking a colorblind test.
    - Intralexical 3y ago
      > infraviolet …Blue?
      - callalex 3y ago
        Indigo, the made-up color that only exists to make the acronym slightly pronounceable.