The chirp of a bird is usually our first sign of spring. We enjoy birds’ natural beauty but often forget that they also important to our ecosystem. Birds are pollinators, seed carriers, and eat billions of insects each year. Without birds we would not have healthy wetlands, forests, and farms.
It is estimated that 100 million-1 billion birds die each year across North America due to collisions with windows.
At Gladstone GrowOp, I hope to raise awareness of the dangerous effects of glass on the migratory bird populations in cities by creating a bird-friendly artwork on the windows of the Gladstone Café.
Because birds vision does not allow them to see glass, FLAP (www.flap.org) suggests that the windows have clear spaces no larger than 5 cm (2 inches) apart horizontally and not more than 10 cm (4 inches) apart vertically in order to create a dense pattern of shapes and vertical lines so that the glass lets in light but projects itself as a solid object—important to deter birds from flying into a window. They are also sensitive to color so color is also a good deterrent.
The bird silhouettes repeated throughout the installation are a play on the hawk silhouettes that are sold to protect birds from flying through your windows. These single silhouettes are ineffective because they do not create a dense enough pattern on the windows.
For more information about my work: www.lunule.com.
For more information about bird friendly design see www.flap.org
