back in the 1970's my family had some good friends in Birmingham, AL, who we would usually get together with once or twice a year. they had a beautiful house on a forested mountainside, with a towering A-frame front entrance with 2 panes of triangular glass which stretched to the ceiling, and this A-frame extended to the back of the house, which was a complete glass wall. you could see all the way through this house, and the view was lovely...trees, rocks, leaves...
from time to time while visiting we would hear a massive "WHOOOOMP!", and we would walk out the front door to see what kind of bird had flown into the windows this time and killed itself. i would estimate that between 1972-1976 i must've witnessed this between 10-15 times (which includes one case where two popped the glass at the same time).
flash forward to today...
Emory University's Math & Science Center is a "green-friendly" building, with soaring glass panels which aid in lighting and whatever else the environmentalists get out of it. it's a hallmark of the Atlanta school's effort to "go green"...it's also the "wall of death", as Emory Professor of Environmental Studies John Wegner charmingly put it in an atlanta journal-constitution story. he estimates that the building, whose windows reflect the forest in front of them, killed at least 60 birds in it's first year (2002) alone. he made a stink about it from the beginning, but, according to the story, it wasn't until he rammed some dead birds into his pockets and whipped them out in a meeting with his boss that he finally got some attention.
it's interesting that "green buildings" all share this glassy template. this bird deal is not isolated to Emory. in addition to my anecdote above (from 30 years ago, mind you...), just a casual coupling of "birds + buildings" in Google found this letter to the editor in a University of Saskatchewan campus newspaper, admonishing the school administration to take care of the same problem.
in the AJC story, they interviewed ornithologist David Klem, a professor who has "studied the problem for decades", and says that between 100 million and 1 billion birds die every year in the US by flying into glass windows. he seems to blame ARCHITECTS for the problem, because of the glass which has become such an integral part of "green" construction. by the way, according to the story, "buildings that earn LEED certification, the brass ring of environmentally sustainable construction, are often largely made of glass". the "brass ring", huh? i was thinking that the LEED certification was mainly an industry thing, but apparently environmental organizations such as the National Resource Defense Council (NRDC) have endorsed this certification.
this whole thing begs so many questions for me...this all has to do with universities and public buildings efforts at environmental "sustainability", which i just blogged about. universities are filled with professors and scientists, right? my roommate, who works in a chemistry lab at the University of Florida, constantly lectures me about the sanctity of research which comes out of universities (as opposed to business-sponsored, which is defiled by $money$) because it is subject to "peer review".
somewhere, when it comes to this "sustainability" movement, this "peer review" seems to overlook the most obvious things--birds run into glass...you might want to mention this to architects--that even a stupid kid from alabama that i was could see as plain as day...
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