Tall buildings aren’t for the birds (PHOTO SLIDESHOW)

By Jack Zemlicka

In the match up of bird versus window, the winged opponent is a decided underdog.

“Birds have no concept that glass exists,” said Scott Diehl, wildlife manager for the Wisconsin Humane Society. “If it’s transparent, they think they can fly right through it.”

As champion of the underdog, in this case migratory birds, Diehl has tried for years to get building designers and owners to consider the winged creatures in their plans for structures. So far, he has had little luck.

Diehl is reminded of this fact each spring and fall, when he and volunteers head out early in the morning several days a week to recover dead birds that have collided with buildings, mainly in downtown Milwaukee. They try to rescue and rehabilitate ones that survive.

“When they are dead, it’s heartbreaking to realize perhaps they have traveled 2,000 miles from South or Central America for years and faced countless dangers only to die from impact on a sixteenth-of-an-inch-thick piece of glass,” Diehl said.

But a shift to more bird-friendly buildings could be on the way.

Rep. Mike Quigley, D-Illinois, last month introduced the Federal Bird-Safe Buildings Act of 2011. It would require bird-safe building materials and design features be used for each public building constructed, acquired or altered by the General Services Administration.

The legislation also would require GSA to take similar actions on existing buildings, where practicable. The bill is awaiting action in the House Subcommittee on Economic Development, Public Buildings and Emergency Management.

Bird-friendly options mentioned by Diehl and others include adhesive decorative vinyl sheets that display patterns only visible to birds, and special windows with bird-repellent patterns.

Local building owners have shown little enthusiasm, however, for such efforts, Diehl said. The lack of cooperation is disheartening, he added.

It is a challenge, he said, to get owners and employers to sacrifice aesthetics or invest the money to remediate existing windows to avoid a few bird crashes each year.

“They haven’t been enthusiastic about taking any action to help stop some of the daytime collisions,” Diehl said.

Notorious collision hot spots in the city, he said, include offices overlooking the lakefront and skywalks with mirrored glass.

Jim Shields, a Milwaukee architect with Minneapolis-based Hammel, Green and Abrahamson Inc. said clients had been reluctant to buy into bird-friendly design because of cost and aesthetic concerns.

Options such as ceramic frit windows that include a series of small white dots to create a bird-repellant pattern are more expensive and can obstruct views, he said.

“Let’s say a glass wall costs $50 a square foot installed,” he said. “With ceramic frit on it, that could be $75 a square foot.”

Clients have complained about the look of ceramic frit, as well, he said.

“Clients have shown distaste for these dots,” he said.

A German company has introduced a transparent alternative to ceramic frit, but the product is expensive and has been slow to gain popularity.

Arnold Glas’ clear, ultraviolet coated window known as Ornilux Bird Protection Glass launched in 2006 in Europe and last year in North America, said Lisa Welch, marketing developer. The windows are advertised as bird-friendly products, she said, but they can cost twice as much as standard glass.

“The responses we encounter are budgetary concerns,” she said, “and also that people just don’t consider birds important enough to make a change.”

While decals can be a more affordable option — a packet of four bird-friendly window decals sells for about $6 on the Humane Society’s website — Diehl acknowledged that depends on how many windows are in the building.

For Milwaukee skyscrapers such as the U.S. Bank Building at 777 E. Wisconsin Ave., which has more than 5,000 windows, solving the bird problem requires more than a few stickers.

U.S. Bank building representatives did not immediately return calls.

Despite the challenges, Diehl said the new products and proposed legislation had him feeling optimistic about the number of injured birds he would find along Milwaukee streets in the future.

“There is a bit of a groundswell of interest and work being done on bird-safe building design,” he said. “The real answer long-term is to not put up buildings that are needlessly dangerous for birds, and it really has to do mostly with the glass.”