as my old buddy anthony used to say, "birdsare weird." there's nothing worse than sitting in your house and hearing the smack of a birdhitting the window. last time it happened to me there was a moment of fear, then a realizationof what really happened, then sadness and pity for the poor little robin… there'sa lot of feels here. now that i've recovered though, i'm angry. what's up bird? can't youfigure this out? real talk: nah. they can't, each year, as many as 340 million birds smashinto cars, and over 10,000 hit airplanes in 2013. building windows claim another 100 million,every year! there's two things afoot here, cornell's laboratory of ornithology says scientistsbelieve birds hit windows because they think it's a hole in the building. birds, like manyanimals, can't understand reflections, so
when they see trees and sky reflected in awindow on a house, they believe it to be a tunnel through which they can see the skyon the other side. birds, especially those attempting to escape from predators, willfly into the glass attempting to get to safety. in fact, most animals can't recognize themselvesin a mirror. the only known species to be able to do so are humans, some great apes,and perhaps dolphins, elephants and magpies -- it's no coincidence that these are alsosome of the most intelligent species around. when an animal like cat sees a reflectionthey don't smell another animal, so they know something's up, but reflections in generalare pretty confounding for most creatures. cars and airplanes are a whole other problem,i did a video about bird strikes a while back,
so check that out. but the problem is morethan just the wrong place at the wrong time… birds fly fast, but they're pretty slow inthe head. based on a comprehensive analysis published last year in the journal of wildlife management,it appears that the speed of our transportation network is what claims the lives of millionsof birds every year. a study in the proceedings of the royal societyb found animal-vehicle collisions occur as vehicle speeds increase because of the waybirds look for predators and other threats. note that they only used the brown-headedcowbird, but they found as the bird flew toward a video of an oncoming car, it initiated escapebehavior at a specific distance from the threat.
they figured bird brains are calculating thedistance to the threat, not time before they impact the threat -- thus, when the car speedincreased, they couldn't get out of the way! when speeds were low, less than 40 miles perhour (64kph), birds were mostly fine, but once they exceed 74 (120kph) they were prettymuch screwed. thinking about it this way, it's incredible that any bird can dodge anairplane accelerating to 160-plus (250kph+) during takeoff, like a 747 has to. as i mentioned, most birds aren't able torecognize window reflections. in the spring, male birds often swoop in to attack windowsbecause they believe the bird they see in the reflection is encroaching on their breedinggrounds. penn state says this is most commonly
seen in mockingbirds, robins, and cardinals;and it will stop when they find a mate… if you're annoyed, maybe you should be the birds… wingman?