help needed!

i don't have a bird photo but i hope this is an ok spot to ask this question. if it isn't, please direct me to the right forum.

our home faces west and we have 3 windows on that side (and no shade). it gets intense sun in summer. last year we had a company come out and install solarfilm on the insides to deflect the heat. it works great. in addition, i can see out but no one can see in. the problem is that if you look at it from the outside, it catches the reflection of my garden and it looks like more garden to the birds. in other words, they are flying into it and killing themselves. it's mostly the doves but any bird is too many. i'm at a loss of what to do. i thought of buying glass beads and stringing them and then hanging a kind of beaded curtain on the outsides of the windows.

has anyone had this problem and how did you solve it? any suggestions would be very much appreciated. a particularly beautiful white winged dove was the latest casualty today and i am just sick about it.

thanks so much. debi

Aw, that's awful. You do know that at night, when you have the lights on inside, that people can see in? I used to have some folks in the neighborhood that were unaware of that little flaw.....
You probably don't want to block your view. The glass beads sound good - pretty, but you can still see out. As you probably know, some people use the flying hawk silhouette. I've wondered how effective that was.

lol ceejay! yes, i know about that. luckily we don't have neighbors and we do have a really long driveway so even from the road, nobody could see anything. it's very handy in the daytime because if someone pulls up, i can stand at the window and check them out and they don't have a clue.

i think the beads would work really well and if no one comes up with something else, i will probably go with it. i don't think i want hawks in all the windows.........lol

i may have found the answer to my own question. i just ordered these. i think they will do the trick! http://www.windowalert.com/index.html

That looks really good, Track!

if they work or don't, i will come back and let you all know. they can't be seen by human eyes, i like that part, only bird eyes!

I'm excited about these. Please let us know what you think!! I lost a cardinal a few weeks ago. And 2 years ago I lost an entire family of house wrens. The parents flew into the picture window followed by all their babies. Just broke my heart.

Yes, please do - I have a couple windows that get hit also, but don't want anything garish on them. Bird's eye view, eh?

Oh, gosh, Boojum - that must have been unbelievably traumatic.

if you click on that link and then on the side there are some other places within the link to click on, it shows what a person sees and what a bird sees. i don't want junk all over the windows, (yuck), but i don't want dead birds under them either. i'm really anxious to try these things out.

I had watched them work so hard to feed those younguns, too. I was very sad-still am.

I completely understand. Two years ago the property in back of us was clear cut and the birds were sooooo confused - they were crashing into our windows for weeks. And when dh left the screen open (a constant issue!), they were flying in and getting trapped up high on the second and third levels of windows. And in the skylights. I climbed more ladders that summer - but I found dead hummers, etc. on the sills. It was a nightmare - I swear I was as traumatized as the poor birds.

I've had those WindowAlert on my patio doors and they work great (really well). I have 2 packages up and all but one little leaf has stayed on. I need to add some more to put on the lower parts of the patio door. I feed the birds on the patio and in front of the patio (and in the yard too) and I don't want them flying into the window doors.

Just follow the directions and they should do the trick. I picked mine up at the local Wild Birds Unlimited store.

Here's a pic from October when I was taking pics of Salvia that you can see how they look from the outside.

Marilyn

Here's another photo from early October when I was taking more pics of Salvias that might show the WindowAlert better for you.

I have some too and haven't had any problems on the windows there on. Need to get more.

i got the leaf design too. looks like a winner!!!!

Hope it works for you. Sounds like a good idea.

just an update to let you all know that since i put these up, not one bird has flown into any of the windows. prior to that, at least one a week and sometimes more. window alert decals are very easy to put up too....and if you want to change them or move them, they come off easy....no sticky mess on the window; they are re-usable.

Glad to hear they worked so well for you!

Thank you for the update. It's good to know that something works - and what it is.