We have recently had several birds fly from our feeders into our sliding glass door that goes from our dining room to the backyard.  We have not had this happen before so have begun to do some research to determine why. Modern homes and office buildings today are often built using insulated and reflective glass. These windows may look great and be very pleasing for humans, but they are lethal to your feathered friends. Birds cannot distinguish the difference between the real sky and the reflection of the sky in a window. Especially during the migration season, millions of birds throughout North America fly into windows and are seriously injured or killed each year.  Migration isn’t the only time that birds have window collisions. Birds may also hit your windows or glass doors during the breeding season and even during the winter.

During the breeding season male woodpeckers, mockingbirds and cardinals may see their own reflections in the window or car mirror and want to “fight” it. They will stop banging your window or door glass as the breeding season comes to an end.

In our case living in the Pacific Northwest our backyard is in shade most of the time. Linda was having trouble growing some of her plants in her Serenity Garden. To solve this problem we had to remove several trees.  The new sunlight in Linda’s Serenity Garden was great for the plants, but was now causing a reflection off the back sliding glass door.

How can we reduce the reflection on our glass door? Life-size, animate “scare birds” such as plastic owls or falcons do not work. Even owl or falcon silhouettes attached to windows with suction cups are not very effective deterrents.  Window or door screens and bird netting are effective in breaking up the reflection of large glass windows and doors. Our problem is we have a sliding glass door and only one half of the door glass is covered by the screen. The half not covered is where the birds fly into. Planting trees or high bushes or shrubs to block the sunlight from reflecting in the glass door was not an option, since we had just removed trees to allow sunlight into the yard.

The solution was to move the feeders closer to the house. Now the birds do not get up to flight speed before they fly into the window. Since moving the feeder we did see one bird fly into the glass door, then after striking it, turn sideways and fly away. If you have space moving the feeders a considerable distance away from your home is another option.