Doink! Everyone has heard that sound before and gone rushing to the nearest window only to find an injured bird lying on the ground outside of the glass. This is called a bird window strike. Sometimes the inside of your home looks like a warm haven to an unlucky bird, and sometimes their reflection looks like another bird and they try to attack it. Other times the surrounding environment reflects off of the glass, making it look like somewhere they can fly.

I had the privilege of interviewing Laura Hackett about the unfortunate nature of bird window strikes. Hackett has worked as Liberty Wildlife’s wildlife biologist for seven years. According to Hackett, there are many large windows at Liberty Wildlife, so in order to minimize bird strikes they do a few things. They lower their shades when they are not in a room, have special tinting that looks like small dots over the glass and have silhouette cutouts of birds of prey affixed to many of their windows. These things help break up the clear visual that birds don’t normally see when flying by.

When bird window strikes do happen, if the birds don’t hit too hard, they just need basic care of “warm, dark and quiet”. The employees at Liberty Wildlife will put the birds in a brooder to keep them calm and warm. They tell people at home to do something similar by placing them in a box with air holes and putting them in a quiet room. Eventually, they get over the stun of knocking into the window and  are fine to fly away.

If birds hit harder and have more severe injuries, you still want to give them a warm, dark, and quiet place to recover but may also need steroids for swelling, pain medicine, and sometimes even bandages for their injuries. These treatments are all available at Liberty Wildlife. Although difficult to estimate, Hackett says that it is safe to say that Liberty Wildlife sees a ew hundred birds brought in due to window strikes each year. If you find an injured bird, the intake window is open daily from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m., and is located at 2600 E. Elwood St. Phoenix AZ 85040. For more information, visit www.libertywildlife.org .

By making our windows more visible and helping birds that strike, we can help our feathered friends make it home for the holidays.