Birds and Glass: An Important Conservation Issue
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Dr. Daniel Klem Jr. presents groundbreaking research on bird-glass collisions, a major but largely invisible conservation crisis. With an estimated 3.5 million birds dying daily in the U.S. alone from flying into windows, Dr. Klem explains why birds cannot see glass, the scale of the problem, and practical solutions like bird-safe glass and window markings.
Key takeaways
- Birds cannot see transparent or reflective glass and fly into it thinking it's open sky or habitat, causing fatal head trauma and internal bleeding.
- An estimated 1.28 to 4.36 billion birds die annually in the U.S. from window collisions, with 70% of injured birds brought to rehabilitation centers ultimately dying.
- The 2x4 rule—patterns with vertical columns separated by 4 inches and horizontal spacing of 2 inches—makes windows visible to birds and reduces collision risk.
- Bird-safe glass costs only 0.01% more than standard construction and can be retrofitted affordably with films; municipalities should adopt building codes requiring these measures.
- Legal protection and citizen advocacy are essential, as voluntary measures and individual action alone have proven insufficient to address this widespread problem.
About Daniel Klem, JrDr. Daniel Klem Jr. is an ornithologist at Muhlenberg College in Allentown, Pennsylvania, and the world's foremost expert on bird-glass collisions, having studied this issue for over 52 years since 1974.
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Program: Birds and Glass: An Important Conservation Issue
Speaker: Daniel Klem, Jr
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Except for habitat destruction, collisions with sheet glass and plastic in residential, commercial, and educational buildings cause the deaths of more birds than any other human-associated avian mortality factor. The toll is estimated in the billions worldwide. Conservation, ethical, and legal reasons justify preventing these unintended and unwanted fatalities that responsible human action can ideally eliminate. This compelling topic has implications for architecture, development, engineering, business and economics, law, philosophy, political science, psychology, and sociology.
Our speaker, Daniel Klem, Jr., is the Sarkis Acopian Professor of Ornithology and Conservation Biology at Muhlenberg College in Allentown, Pennsylvania. Among other diverse avian investigations, for 52 years (more than half a century) and continuing to the present, he studies, writes, and teaches about the threat that sheet glass and plastic pose to birds. No other scientist comprehensively has studied and published research results documenting and evaluating the means to prevent this human-associated avian mortality factor. He is motivated by available and growing evidence that bird-window collisions are an important wildlife conservation, building industry, legal, and animal welfare issue for birds and people worldwide. His continuing goal is to make the human-built environment safe for birds.
His latest contributions explaining and providing solutions for the window threat to birds is a new book (2021): Solid Air, Invisible Killer: Saving Billions of Birds from Windows, and two recently published scientific peer-reviewed articles in the Wilson Journal of Ornithology: (2024) Evidence, consequences, and angle of strike of bird-window collisions that quantitatively reveals that minimally 1.28 billion to 3.46 billion birds annually are killed striking windows in the U.S. alone, billions worldwide, and (2025) Bird-window collisions: A critical review that offers the most updated comprehensive summary on the topic.
Members and guests, please welcome Daniel Klem, Jr.!
To learn more, go to:
To learn more about Dr Klem's work, go to:
https://www.pbs.org/video/engineering-bird-friendly-glass-gl4lku/
https://www.danielklemjr.org/
https://www.muhlenberg.edu/birds-and-windows/
To review Dr Klem's slides from this presentation, go to:
https://tinyurl.com/DanKlem-Rotary26
To learn more about the Rotary eClub of Silicon Valley, go to:
http://rotary.cool
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