Green Thought Thursdays: Birds Colliding with Windows

Once a week, I am offering up a tip or action or idea that we can all engage with to help reduce waste, use less materials and energy, help conserve species or habitats, and/or generally work towards living in ways that allow for more health and wellbeing for all aspects of the planet.

This week the green thought is about windows and the danger they pose to birds. Birds often have a hard time seeing windows. When birds can see through an area, they think they can fly through that area. Especially if the window if reflecting the surrounding sky and vegetation, or if there is another window across the room making a passage through seem possible, birds may attempt to fly through and can collide with the window pane quite hard. Collisions with windows kill almost 1 billion birds a year just in the USA, so this is definitely a very big problem.

This diamond pattern of lines can help to prevent birds colliding with this window. Photo: Alexandra Smith

A bunch of solutions are out there. Window decals can work. These are basically stickers that are placed on a window pane so that birds will notice that a window is solid. However, to be effective, decals must be placed 2 to 4 inches apart. If they are spaced more widely, birds ma try and fly through the gaps. Patterns of lines or dots can be just as effective as other shapes such as bird or leaf silhouettes. Other solutions are to put screens in front of windows or to close curtains or blinds behind windows. Placing bird feeders near, or even attached to, windows also helps because the birds are more likely to see the window when it is close, and also will not be able to build up speed if they do fly into it.

What do you think of these thoughts and the solutions? Do you have any other solution ideas?

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Green Thought Thursdays: Used Books and Libraries

Once a week, I am offering up a tip or action or idea that we can all engage with to help reduce waste, use less materials and energy, help conserve species or habitats, and/or generally work towards living in ways that allow for more health and wellbeing for all aspects of the planet.

So, this week the green thought is about books. I LOVE books! I read a lot. My wife reads a lot. our daughter reads a lot. Our house has a lot of books. But printing new books means cutting down trees, using water, and burning fossil fuels to make paper and bind books. Overall, producing one new book can result in around 6 pounds of CO2 gas being released into the atmosphere which means that books have a rather high environmental cost.

Used books and library books (Photo by Aaron N.K. Haiman).

Two solutions are to buy used books and to utilize libraries. Buying a used book means less production of new paper. This means less tree cutting, lower water use, and less energy consumption. All good things. Buying used books is a much more environmentally sensitive choice when compared to buying a new book, but it still means purchasing a book that will go into your personal collection and does still contribute to climate change. Getting a book from a library reduces all the associated costs even more since one library book can be read by a very large number of people, and library collections can help reduce the need for large private collections. Plus, by visiting a library and checking out books, you are helping to show that libraries are valuable resources and should continue to receive public support and funding.

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Green Thought Thursdays: Indoor Cats

Once a week, I am offering up a tip or action or idea that we can all engage with to help reduce waste, use less materials and energy, help conserve species or habitats, and/or generally work towards living in ways that allow for more health and wellbeing for all aspects of the planet.

So, this week the green thought is about keeping cats indoors. Cats are very efficient and successful hunters. When let out of doors, they can and do kill large numbers of wildlife including approximately 1.3–4.0 billion birds and 6.3–22.3 billion mammals each year. Further, domestic cats have directly contributed to the extinction of about 63 species of birds, mammals, and reptiles worldwide. Domestic cats represent a very significant threat to wildlife.

Cats sitting in an enclosure on the side of a house (photo courtesy of digsdigs.com).

A solution is to keep cats indoors. Cats can get plenty of exercise and entertainment inside, and enclosures can be created to allow cats to safely enjoy some sunshine and fresh air. Additional benefits of keeping cats indoor are that cats avoid getting lost, attacked by other animals such as dogs or other cats, and they also being hit by cars!

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Green Thought Thursdays: Low Flow Showers

Once a week, I am offering up a tip or action or idea that we can all engage with to help reduce waste, use less materials and energy, help conserve species or habitats, and/or generally work towards living in ways that allow for more health and wellbeing for all aspects of the planet.

So, this week the green thought is about how to use less water in the shower. Water requires a lot of energy to pump. It is also a very scarce resource (especially if you live somewhere that experience extreme drought conditions like I am in California). Using a lot of water when we shower uses up a lot of energy, and means burning fossil fuels which are the cause of global climate change. Using a lot of water when we shower also uses a lot of WATER!

Example of a low-flow showerhead in action (photo courtesy of Earth 911).

Two solutions come to mind for this issue. The obvious one is to take shorter showers. We can all challenge ourselves to shorten the time we spend in each shower that we take. Another great solution is to install a low-flow showerhead. These can be found for $10-$20 (and sometimes more) at your local hardware store and they will likely reduce the amount of water used in a shower by around 40%. If we all install low-flow showerheads there will be more water for fish in the rivers, trees in the forests, and in our taps for drinking!

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Waterfowl Declines in California

A flock of Mallards lifting off of a pond. Photo: U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Each spring since 1948 staff from the California Department of Fish and Wildlife have conducted a survey of central and northeastern California to count the numbers of ducks and geese that are breeding in those areas. These counts are conducted by biologists flying in fixed-wing aircraft over the central and northern parts of California, and they form the basis of the California Breeding Waterfowl Survey. This long term data set is hugely powerful when scientists are looking at long term trends in populations and examining the effects of habitat loss, climate change, human population growth, pollution, and other factors.

Fixed-wing plane used during a breeding waterfowl survey over the Klamath River Basin. Photo: Keith Stein

The 2022 California Breeding Waterfowl Survey was just released and it’s not great. The total number of waterfowl breeding in California has declined 19% since 2019. All species were found to be in decline to some extent. Canada Goose were the least impacted with declines of 5% since 2019. Cinnamon Teal were hit the hardest with declines 54% since 2019. That means that there are only about half as many Cinnamon Teal breeding in California today as there were just four years ago! Mallard (the most common species of duck that breeds in California) and Gadwall were also hit hard with declines of 25% and 31%, respectively, since 2019.

These declines are in large part likely due to poor breeding habitat conditions. Ducks and geese need water to breed. The 2021-22 winter in California had below average precipitation across California, and the snow pack water content in California’s mountains is also below average. Such continued and serious drought conditions are resulting in less water for both natural and managed wetlands, and so to the poor breeding habitats and reducing waterfowl populations found in the survey.

Hopefully more water will fall in the state this coming winter. In the mean time, save water any way you can! The less water we all use, the more will remain in rivers, streams, reservoirs, etc. that can benefit the birds, fish, and other wildlife of California!

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