Research, industry, and advocacy perspectives on collision deterrent marker spacing
Hi Heidi and Brendon!
Research, industry, and advocacy: the three horsemen of the bird safe building movement
What does it mean for marks to be too far apart? Canada says 10 cm apart vertically, or 5 cm apart horizontally. But is that accurate? 👀
WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE EFFECTIVE??
Research on 2" x 2": In 2008, Consilium Place found 2" x 4" gray dots to be 50% effective and very ugly. They removed those and used 2" x 2" white dots instead. FLAP thought at the time that this might end up being better for birds anyway.
Empirical tunnel tests, surveys, field tests can be used to evaluate bird safe interventions.
Great point from Brendon: testing efficacy of a product (confirmatory evidence) DOES NOT EQUAL figuring out the principles behind why the product works (hypothesis testing).
Relevant: how do birds fly through gaps? Tests that have studied how nimble/mobile birds are indicates that tighter spacing would be much more effective, but we're still not sure what makes birds notice the deterrents.
On the industry side, there are 2" x 4" products that work
Differences in code from region to region makes it very difficult for manufacturers to standardize and scale production of bird safe materials to a commercially justifiable level.
Echoing Alex: patterns that remain effective when rotated are more efficient for commercial application because they can be cut in different ways and still be effective. This makes 2" x 2" preferable for industry.
Industry is ONLY testing on glass applications. Off glass products, such as Acopian bird savers or other deterrents, are 3 dimensional in how they look for birds and humans. Bird savers in particular are recommended for 4" horizontal spacing. The paracord may move and create a reflection, making it visually distinct and more impressive to birds.
Professors Saenger and Klem have tested 2" x 4" and found it satisfactory. Their methodology did not include hummingbirds, which may be less deterred by wider spaced marks.
More is not necessarily better if you lose contrast with the image in/on the glass.
Rössler, Bird-friendly building with glass and light (2023). Different sizes of markers need different densities, etc.
Research gaps: How to protect small birds? Mark spacing vs. size vs. materials effectiveness tradeoffs? How to measure and account for visual context?
How and why do marker technologies actually deter birds from hitting glass?
Goal is to create mechanistic models based on principles.
Uh oh, deceptive marketing practices... Canada now has a requirement to prove environmental benefits to justify marketing. Brendon did some work on the economics of bird safe retrofit businesses that he presented earlier as well.
Overall, this was a great presentation and packed a lot of information about a delicate topic into a very short amount of time. I want to add some discussion to try to unify certain points under the cut.
Point 1: From a research perspective, we have enough research to know that the questions around why birds hit windows and what is, in the case of each building, best to get them to stop doing that are very complex. There is a lot of work still to do to develop our understanding of that mechanism in a way that can account for all the factors that crop up in specific instances of the general problem. How reflections work, how bird eyes work, how light shifts and changes... there's a lot there.
Point 2: While the research is as yet inconclusive, the glass industry is commercializing products to act as bird deterrents. From the perspective of industry, the best products are as simple and versatile as possible to allow large scale production. From this POV, 2" x 2" white dots that are "big enough" (sorry Heidi, I can never remember what this measurement is) tend to be preferred by commercial sellers, as from our current understanding they are probably the most generally effective and the most economic to produce. I think Heidi did a great job walking the tightrope to say why 2" x 2" is the current standard in new build applications, despite apparent differences in research results.
Point 3: Brendon had not that much to say about the advocacy side of things, which is fine. Advocacy on this is complicated because it's a complicated topic. Nuanced, tempered, evidence-based approaches are difficult to communicate to non-experts, unless they are prepared to commit the (substantial) time and energy to becoming experts. At the same time, a lot of people who come into advocacy on this topic do so with a sense of urgency and overwhelm given the scale of the problem. People motivated through urgency are prone to look for simpler, easier solutions, and react poorly toward having their mistakes pointed out to aid in future development.
I want to be very clear that I do not blame anyone for having this experience. When I started in advocacy around this issue, I too was of the opinion "Well, it's just so easy!" and I too made a lot of mistakes. That is part of learning.
What is difficult in the bird safe movement is that the consequences of an advocate making a mistake can feel very bad. It is easy to look at every window that has a hawk sticker on it and think of it as a window that could have been safe -- but wasn't, because the person responsible made a mistake. Watching other people make mistakes that you know will result in animal death makes it very difficult to take a light-handed, yes-and approach that, in my opinion, is the best kind of approach for the human/advocate involved in order to encourage development.
"Oh look at those hawk stickers! What are some designs we could add in between them to help fill the rest of the space? Yes, notice how that remaining space is quite large? I wonder if those spaces are also dangerous for birds?"
A lot of people who feel hurt by the human world around them turn to nature and science for comfort. Nature, and bird watching in particular, can be very healing. Trying to care for your comfort space is a natural progression of investment. But -- advocacy around large-scale human-caused bird death is grim and often thankless, sometimes dangerous work. I have met many people with frayed emotions or genuine trauma linked to this kind of work. It's tough.
I think what Brendon said about anecdata is interesting -- paraphrasing, that we should seek better data than anecdata when testing collision deterrents.
I agree with him in terms of what he is literally saying. Anecdata is very chaotic and incomplete. It is difficult to distill it down to the grade of information quality necessary to create a reliable building code and industrial standards, which ultimately are what we need to ensure new buildings are bird safe. We want to be as effective as possible, and that requires formalisms to isolate and drill down on each element and how they interact.
From an advocacy perspective, I disagree with the sentiment that anecdata is not useful. (To be clear, I don't think that's something he was saying, but I think from my own perspective and interests it is a topic I want to discuss.)
First, sharing anecdata is a way for people to get the reps in to strengthen their ability to observe and report on the world around them, without the administrative overhead of keeping a spreadsheet. This observer/reporter/interpreter muscle is of paramount importance to human well being, and by extension the ability of humans to care for themselves and the world around them.
Second, sharing and discussing anecdata is a way of building and testing community ties. The skills for people to be able to inform each other, resolve disputes, and decide on common goals take a lot of practice to develop. People who grew up in the suburbs and attended lecture-based classes for most of their life often do not have the practice to engage effectively in this kind of communal work when they first seek out these kinds of spaces. Again, finger solidly pointed at myself on this one.
Third, sharing anecdata is a way for people to seek healing and support from their community.
Finally, I personally believe there should be a dialogue between anecdata and formalized research, as weirder things happen in the real world that people in regimented, formalized settings can usually even imagine. These types of weirdnesses are where the greatest opportunities for progress can really be found.
While the previous paragraphs are more generally applicable than just in the bird safe buildings movement, I want to tie this community building process back to the concept of bird safe buildings.
The efforts of bird safe advocacy are split between new construction (usually glass) and retrofits (usually appliques on existing glass or off-glass deterrents). The considerations around bird safe new construction are very different from retrofits! In short, retrofits are much more expensive in human and material resources.
My experience has been that successful retrofit efforts require group cooperation. The groups do not need to be large, but the amount of work involved in approving, funding, and installing the retrofits is usually more than 1 person can handle. On the residential side, there are plenty of building residents who cannot put up retrofit materials themselves and/or need help navigating the informational space from compassionate teachers/assistants. I don't think the buildings that these individual rely on become bird safe without community trust, discussion, a lot of informal conversation, and a healthy dose of "Well we'll try, even if we know we might fuck it up. We're okay with learning, and figuring out what might work better next time if we need to."
Shouts to Heidi, my mentor. She is an absolute rock. Shouts to Brendon, congrats on the thesis. I will be emailing you about it :) You too will hear of my schemes :) :) :)
Guardian glass makes glass. Glass is usually coated w stuff.
Portfolio of bird friendly: frit, etch, UV
How do these materials help prevent window collisions?
4 dominant methods of testing prevention efficacy: tunnel testing 1&2, field tests, monitoring.
These tests can yield different results.
Also, different buildings w the same deterrents can have different strike rates. Very weird! Can we make it make sense?
Birds are very visual, so any deterrent needs to communicate using visual language to signal something is in the way
2 components: background (thru glass, what is in the building), foreground (on glass, reflected image)
Here we can see how differences in the reflected image impact the visibility of the on-glass deterrent pattern -- the white dots. These dots are most visible over top of the dark image.
Glass also can reflect habitat which birds want to try to go to, increasing strike risk at those areas.
Glass looks very different depending on angle, time of day, etc.
So what do we do?
Deterrent density helps a lot -- where you don't have deterrents on a window, you will get strikes.
Deterrent size should be large enough to be easily visible.
Deterrent should be opaque and on the outside of the glass.
Deterrent color should be of a contrasting color to what you see in/on the glass -- hard to do when that changes.
These indicate elements to consider for deterrents: pattern spacing, element size, color/material visual contrast, surface position, glass makeup (tint, reflectivity, etc.)
To respect these elements, we use deterrents that change how light is reflected or transmitted: matte/glossy or opaque/see through.
Frit is usually very obvious. It can be sensitive to color change, but white usually stands out on white backgrounds when the dots themselves are shadowed in the glass.
Etch has a blurring effect, can be less expensive.
Europe has laminant, curved dots.
Patterned coatings, including UV, can reflect light in a deterring manner. All manufacturers make different UV, and it can be hard to find something effective depending on the specs of the individual products.
Summary:
Examples of how the products show up differently.
Call for tests that isolate stimuli more carefully to figure out what works.
3 different architectural approaches: code compliance, preserve aesthetics, high efficiency. Be aware of who you're talking to bc it changes what information they will care about.
You ever notice that people that complain about censorship only mean when it applies to issues they care about, not so much if you're responding to them?
I mention this because the YouTube channel Due Diligence is fairly quick to talk about the sins of censorship, fascism and other issues, unless you happen to have disagreements with them, in which case your responses vanish into the ether, as if you never said them in the first place.
For example, they recently ran a story where they're essentially cheerleading for Tucker Carlson.
Now the thing is if you've been at all paying attention for the last decade is that Carlson is a flaming nativist, as well as a racist.
But according to Due Diligence and their supporters, that's okay because Newsweek may have smeared him.
By the way, you ever wonder how it is we got Joe Biden inflicted upon us?
I suspect that that people who pretend that his past legislative record wasn't nearly as terrible as it actually was might have something to do with it.
Now they're doing the same thing in reference to Tucker Carlson.
While owning single-family units has its own set of benefits, one vacancy in a single-family house means ZERO rental cash flow for the investor.
While owning single-family units has its own set of benefits, one vacancy in a single-family house means ZERO rental cash flow for the investor. This is one of the main reasons why countless real estate investors choose multifamily investment properties. The increased cash flow opportunity along with the convenience of having multiple doors under one roof gives real estate investors peace of mind that a single-family just doesn’t offer.
For those new to real estate investing, a multifamily property such as a duplex, triplex, or other multi unit apartment building, means having two or more units in the same building. The benefits of choosing to buy a multifamily property are endless. You have a much lower risk of complete vacancy since you have more units, a higher cash flow from more units, potential tax breaks that you don’t get with single family homes, and the opportunity to build your investment portfolio at a faster rate by partnering with to collectively invest in these types of properties.
Doing proper due diligence on a Multifamily property before you buy is an extremely important part of being a successful real estate investor.
What you do whenever you look at a new property, or start a due diligence process after getting an offer accepted, is to contact your team of contractors. You get them to all show up on the property and everybody walks the units and premises together. Have each one of them inspect the buildings for their area of expertise. When this is done, you have each contractor give a written estimate for the needed repairs.
By doing this you accomplish several things at once. You now have the inspection done and you know what is right and wrong with the deal. At this point, you will know how much cash you are going to need to get the repairs done after closing.
Here's what you can do to make the most out of your isolation period time by shifting your mindset to focus on the abundance and control you do have instead of what you can't do.
Elevated exposure to COVID-19 is part of the territory when it comes to my line of work in real estate. We have to focus on ensuring our community of tenants and investors are served, and that means that, at times, we are at higher risk for exposure while performing tasks like due diligence and site visits. With Omicron becoming more prevalent, I had the likely inevitable happen after completing a site visit: a positive COVID test. I was fortunate enough to only experience mild symptoms like a stuffy nose and low fever, but the real impact I felt was during the required isolation period to protect my family and others from infection.
While at first I was frustrated and focusing on how bored I was because I couldn’t do things that I normally would, something clicked during that isolation period. It was actually a rather very enlightening experience. I realized that without the constant distractions from my family and work obligations, I was able to truly be in control of my time and my life.
Doing proper due diligence on a Multifamily property before you buy is an extremely important part of being a successful real estate investor.
What you do whenever you look at a new property, or start a due diligence process after getting an offer accepted, is to contact your team of contractors. You get them to all show up on the property and everybody walks the units and premises together. Have each one of them inspect the buildings for their area of expertise. When this is done, you have each contractor give a written estimate for the needed repairs.
By doing this you accomplish several things at once. You now have the inspection done and you know what is right and wrong with the deal. At this point, you will know how much cash you are going to need to get the repairs done after closing.
