Safe Wings | Protecting our Feathered Friends
Our 2024 AGM Guest Speaker was Dr. Willow English, who gave a very interesting talk about the need to protect birds from colliding with windows, and what measures we can take to help prevent bird collisions at our homes.
She spoke on behalf of Safe Wings, a volunteer-based initiative of the Ottawa Field-Naturalists’ Club devoted to reducing bird mortality from window collisions through research, prevention and rescue. Among other things, SafeWings monitors downtown Ottawa buildings for bird injuries and deaths due to window strikes. Monitoring is intermittent given their dependance on volunteer availability, yet in 2020 over 4,700 bird collisions were reported, and they calculate that 144 different species have been involved in window collisions since 2014.
Collisions with glass are reported to be the 2nd highest cause of human-caused bird mortality in Canada. The leading cause of bird mortality is cats.
CLICK HERE to view Dr. English’s Powerpoint presentation, and visit the Safe Wings website for more information.
Our thanks to Dr. English for her contribution to our AGM.