[HN Gopher] The glass at McCormick Place in Chicago is a lethal ...
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The glass at McCormick Place in Chicago is a lethal obstacle for
birds
Author : c420
Score : 230 points
Date : 2023-10-07 11:27 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theguardian.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theguardian.com)
| nicolaslem wrote:
| I highly encourage anyone who had birds crash on their windows to
| install white dot stickers. I installed some last spring on my
| windows and not a single bird crashed on them since.
|
| At first they look a bit odd, but after a week they were almost
| invisible, turns out the brain is really good at hiding things we
| don't care to see. They are a bit of a pain to install but it is
| well worth the effort.
| xoa wrote:
| Worth mentioning there are pricier but even more invisible,
| similar idea solutions. I've got stickers I put on my house and
| have suggested to clients that are translucent in the visible
| spectrum but strongly reflect UV. Lots of birds (and in
| particular songbirds, these are on rural residential buildings
| with no more than 3 stories so raptors aren't going into them)
| have receptors for ultraviolet, so to them the stickers look
| opaque glowing white. They're effective and may be more
| aesthetic, though again more expensive (they need to be
| replaced every 6-9 months, the chemical that reflects UV breaks
| down). Another approach I've used is a sticker that simulates a
| golden spider web. While not translucent, the thin web look is
| very subtle, but apparently a lot of birds have evolved to be
| very hard wired to avoid flying through heavy spider webs so it
| triggers an avoidance response well.
|
| Finally, there are bug screens that have gotten very subtle too
| (high density thin weave with low visibility materials used in
| their construction). As well as reducing external reflection,
| those will just plain act as a softer shock absorber if a bird
| runs into one. And of course keep out insects, so doing their
| job anyway.
|
| I'll add that I still do have (far fewer) bird hits once in
| awhile, but the big change seems to be outcome. Before a lot of
| birds died. Afterwards what seems to happen is the hits still
| see it at the last moment, and the hits have 99% turned into
| bellyflops. Not fun for the bird no doubt, but it also isn't
| lethal, they just fly away. Bird _death_ in my experience is
| generally caused by broken necks, they fly in head first and
| their neck snaps and that 's it. So even if they swerve as the
| very last moment, it's still a huge boost in survivability. On
| a big building it might help to have some nets out of sight
| below windows though so that birds which are temporarily
| stunned don't fall all the way to the ground.
| dtgriscom wrote:
| The UV stickers sound interesting, but is there a
| (human-)visual indication that they've stopped working? If
| not, there'll be a whole lot of useless dots on windows,
| making owners feel better but not actually helping anything.
| xoa wrote:
| Unless you have a UV camera then no, there is no indication
| to humans [0]. Though as sibling said, if nothing else
| you'd have the obvious direct grim evidence if they had
| failed. But at the same time I've not found it a concern in
| practice, there's plenty of stuff in a household that
| simply needs to be replaced/renewed on an annual or semi-
| annual basis with no particular indicator before failure.
| Just part of building maintenance. I set an annual calendar
| notification and roll it into spring/fall cleanup lists
| along with things like gutter cleaning. They don't just
| fail at wildly varying rates, it's a straight forward curve
| of breakdown so when it says "replace these every 6 months"
| one can just do that.
|
| ----
|
| 0: FWIW you can get basic simple monochrome UV-USB 1080p
| cameras (350-380nm range or so, to get down to 300nm
| requires much more expensive lenses) to play with for <$250
| new, similar to basic low res FLIRs. They can be
| interesting looks at the world, you can see everything from
| sunscreen applications to UV patterns on some flowers.
| gus_massa wrote:
| A few years ago, my wife was taking photos of spectral
| lines of a mercury lamp with our normal camera and she
| noticed an additional line in the photo. It was an UV
| line that was visible by the camera but not by the eye.
|
| [IIRC a Cannon camera, not very expensive or fancy. It
| was very good taking photos of dark rooms during
| birthdays.]
|
| Edit: Fixed typo IV -> UV
| p1mrx wrote:
| > It was an IV line that was visible by the camera but
| not by the eye.
|
| If you can't see infraviolet, consider taking a
| colorblind test.
| Intralexical wrote:
| > infraviolet
|
| ...Blue?
| callalex wrote:
| Indigo, the made-up color that only exists to make the
| acronym slightly pronounceable.
| gus_massa wrote:
| Thanks. I fixed the typo.
| vijayr02 wrote:
| Since we're all being pedantic: infrared is also
| infraviolet
| theptip wrote:
| Presumably you get the auditory indication of birds
| resuming their collisions with your window.
| xwdv wrote:
| I don't like stickers on my windows, ruins the aesthetic.
| Instead we should have some kind of spray that transmits a
| wavelength of light only birds could see but is invisible to
| humans.
| katbyte wrote:
| UV reflective stickers
| ornornor wrote:
| You can buy a UV pen and draw patterns on the windows. You
| won't see them but birds will.
| oooyay wrote:
| I get a lot of birds in my yard and decorated the windows with
| translucent UV stickers. Now every sunset I get to see a
| stained glass dragon on my wood floors. Highly recommend.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| Also for deer. Deer are idiots, the males even more so during
| the rut. They will see similarly-sized deer in any vertical
| glass surface (their own reflection) and charge the window
| antlers-first. They break through the glass and now you have a
| deer running around inside your house or school. A few stickers
| won't stop them from seeing their reflection, but it will put
| an "object" between them and thereby stop the charge. I've even
| seen this in car windows. Tall deer (elk) are so dumb that they
| will repeatedly charge the tiny elk reflected in a car window.
| They aren't attacking the car but the other elk they think is
| inside. I'm surprised they all don't drown every time they see
| rival elk inside a calm lake.
| chimpanzee wrote:
| > I'm surprised they all don't drown every time they see
| rival elk inside a calm lake.
|
| They probably figure the rival elk is already drowning, so
| why bother.
|
| Whereas a rival elk inside a car or house is just plain
| aggravating. _Who does he think he is? A human?_
| amelius wrote:
| > the brain is really good at hiding things we don't care to
| see
|
| This is why my desk looks like a mess to other people ;)
| mactavish88 wrote:
| We find that, while this deters birds, it seems to attract
| bees. They fly and land on many individual dots before
| eventually flying away.
|
| Has anyone else experienced this?
| nicolaslem wrote:
| I have not noticed anything like this.
| whycome wrote:
| They think they're flowers? UV light equivalent?
|
| https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-11971274
| "Database shows how bees see world in UV"
| ornornor wrote:
| My partner has a very white bicycle helmet and bugs are often
| flying into it for the same reason I think. Mines darker and
| it almost never happens other than the occasional and
| expected collision.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| This also works for humans, who have a tendency to walk through
| glass sliding doors if no pattern is applied.
|
| https://www.purlfrost.com/blog/stop-people-walking-glass-pat...
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Ha ha, and when Apple had to add these to the new
| "mothership" campus in Cupertino they were referred to as
| "Jony's Tears".
| loopz wrote:
| We have success with post-it notes. Very cheap, and provides
| respite from birds breaking their necks outside our windows.
| 99_00 wrote:
| I keep the venitian blinds down but open for our problem window.
| kevinmchugh wrote:
| We'd had a very warm fall until Wednesday of this week.
| Temperature dropped 30 degrees. Birds had been enjoying the warm
| weather and then the sudden change had them all migrating at
| once. They ran into a rainstorm which made migration very
| difficult (this is called fallout). So now you've got tons of
| birds struggling to migrate and aiui flying at lower altitude
| because of the rain
|
| McCormick (the building in question) is a very large building
| immediately off the lake with lots of glass windows. There may be
| some additional mitigations to be made but it's a bad confluence
| of events. It doesn't happen even once a decade.
|
| This is an important migration corridor, there's even a nice bird
| sanctuary within site of McCormick. If you're ever there for a
| convention the area surrounding the convention center is very
| nice. Northerly Island is becoming one of the nicest parks in
| Chicago, and is a wonderful walk from the convention center.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| kimburgess wrote:
| Bug in the latest firmware. Should be patched during the next
| recharge or OTA for the newer models.
| Condition1952 wrote:
| I looked out the window yesterday for a few minutes. I think I
| heard a chirp faraway among the natural traffic stream.
|
| The silent spring is coming.
| tapland wrote:
| Gloomy weather? Lamps on in the office? This creates a bird death
| trap.
| joe__f wrote:
| The numbers here are staggering....
| [deleted]
| sinuhe69 wrote:
| In one migration day, not every day, as I initially thought what
| the title suggested.
| fbdab103 wrote:
| Similarly, but then I realized I had never heard anyone warn
| me, "Stay off of Canal street. By 1pm the stench of the
| hundreds of bird carcasses really starts to hit you. Dead bird
| retrieval does not happen till 7pm."
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Yeah, you start to run the numbers (multiply by 365 days in a
| year, times the number of buildings in Chicago, times the
| number of cities...) and you see a mass extinction before next
| Spring.
| xnx wrote:
| For buildings that don't have permanent bird strike mitigation
| measures built in, I wonder if temporary whitewash applied by
| window cleaners would help.
| HankB99 wrote:
| It seems to me that that would be an effective temporary
| solution, but would have to be re-applied following rain. The
| bigger problem would be cost. The building in the article is
| McCormick place which was hit pretty hard during Covid and is
| likely still recovering (financially.) But no business is
| likely to spend the $$$ to mitigate the issue unless they are
| forced.
|
| The bigger problem is that this is not the only building in
| Chicago that is hazardous to birds. Fix this one and there will
| be another noteworthy for the "most bird strikes" in Chicago.
| xnx wrote:
| I didn't realize it was McCormick place when I posted. That
| building is probably particularly bad because it's right on
| the shore of Lake Michigan (a bird migration superhighway).
| Ironically/tragically, the situation might have been made
| worse in recent years by the reestablishment of native plants
| in the immediately surround area. I'm certainly no expert,
| but I wondered if temporary whitewash might be more amenable
| to the building owner than something more permanent. It is a
| massive building complex, but might even only be necessary to
| do the north facing side. The roof overhang might allow it to
| stick around for a few peak-migration weeks.
| ReptileMan wrote:
| [flagged]
| nilamo wrote:
| I didn't realize lamb could fly.
| ReptileMan wrote:
| In the west it's mostly chicken.
| nilamo wrote:
| How far west? I'm in Michigan, and almost always lamb
| unless specifically mentioned otherwise.
| bbarn wrote:
| Mildly related anecdote:
|
| At one job, we had an expensive office built out as our company
| grew. The CEO and CTO came in from out of town to do the ribbon
| cutting so to speak and welcome us to our new office. I was there
| as a manager doing setup before we moved the main workforce into
| the new office, and the CTO came through the kitchen to talk to
| me, and smashed his face right into a glass wall. Broke his nose
| and had to fly home eventually.
|
| The day before the team moved in, I convinced the CEO rather
| easily to put the company logo decalled on that wall.
| giantrobot wrote:
| When Apple Park first started migrating teams a number of
| people walked into the glass doors in the hallways. They pretty
| quickly put up little markers on the glass. It was still a
| stupid design not built for humans.
| [deleted]
| Animats wrote:
| Did Apple use low-iron glass, as they do at the retail
| outlets? That eliminates the greenish tint in thick glass and
| is harder to see.
| giantrobot wrote:
| The glass was very transparent/untinted so I'd guess they
| did. Inside the atriums between sections don't have any
| tint from the glass or at least it's not noticeable.
|
| When my group first moved in the glass was ridiculously
| hard to see between the sections. It was made more
| confusing because the doorways had four panes of glass but
| only the center two panes were doors. It was easy early on
| to think the outermost lanes were also doors. IIRC (it's
| been a few years) one of the walkway runs didn't require
| badge access in the first few days so people could walk
| full speed into the doors without diverting to the badge
| reader on the wall.
|
| I'm sure all of Apple Park looked amazing in AutoCAD fly-
| thrus or whatever but the experience in the building was
| kind of shitty. Some aspects were improvements over the
| building over off Infinite Loop but then a lot of aspects
| were hilariously form over function.
| tomcam wrote:
| I'm guessing temperature control would be rough there
| most of the year, when it's sunny? Also what were the
| other issues you had with the building?
| whycome wrote:
| People adapt and become less human... There must be a weird
| sort of anxiety to walk around and be extra cautious that
| reality can suddenly turn into a glass wall.
| zo1 wrote:
| I once _ran_ into a glass door in my house a few years
| back. For months after that, I had anxiety and "flashback"
| like replays of the event when walking anywhere near that
| door/area in my house. That one incident affected the
| functioning of my brain for a really long time, it was
| quite jarring.
| tomcam wrote:
| I mowed into a ground nest of hornets at my house a few
| months ago. Took me over a month to get back in the
| saddle. I "felt" the stings every time I walked near that
| patch.
| dieselgate wrote:
| Wow this is real, I remember decades ago when my brother was
| young he ran into a glass door similarly. This is usually why
| new window decals take so long to be removed on construction
| sites - or taped with an X
| gmerc wrote:
| Regulation is the answer here since the mitigation methods are
| known
| zdragnar wrote:
| Regulations have existed in Chicago for over 50 years. The
| building predates it, and has been adding mitigations such as
| changing lighting and applying stickers for some time now.
|
| This is not a common occurrence for the building in question.
| whydoyoucare wrote:
| Not just birds, but with everything else in life, I tend to
| first check if regulations exist before advocating for (more)
| regulation.
| gmerc wrote:
| It's not a binary question. Effective regulation (including
| timely updates such as mandating seat belts or airbags once
| they become possible) very much is a living ongoing project.
| wink wrote:
| How can you write such an article and not put a photo of the
| building there? Yes, I can search one but WTF.
| silenced_trope wrote:
| Right!?
|
| I came here to ask the same question and Cmd-F-ed to this
| comment.
|
| I had to google it to see the photos of the building.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| I worked in a building that attempted to address this. The three-
| story glass lobby had its glass wall raked outwards by 30*. If
| you approached the glass from inside then your feet would contact
| it before your face, which really helped at night when outside
| was brighter than the interior. And birds on the outside would
| see a reflection of the ground rather than transparent glass. All
| seemed good. Until a convention of blind people booked the lobby
| for a meeting. When they approached the building from the
| outside, their canes did not detect the glass wall prior to their
| faces smacking into it. We hurriedly erected foot-high barriers
| so their canes has something to _see_ before impact.
| hinkley wrote:
| Maybe 30deg is too aggressive. 10-15 probably suffices and is
| still cane compatible. Plus no assholes trying to climb the
| glass on the inside.
| konstantinua00 wrote:
| huh, if anything, I wouldn't have imagined birds smacking into
| windows on first floor...
| Jorge1o1 wrote:
| Many buildings are deliberately designed with mirrored glass
| on the first floor and lots of trees so that they can "blend
| in" with the urban landscape and look more "natural", less
| "artificial".
|
| What's interesting is that what we as humans consider more
| natural is actually antithetical to nature, because when the
| birds see the reflected trees, they can't parse that it's a
| reflection and fly straight into it -- leading to bird
| deaths.
| KineticLensman wrote:
| Yes birds mainly fly into my house windows when they see
| good reflections of the trees in the garden, in the
| windows.
| KolmogorovComp wrote:
| The Toronto Best Practice for Bird-Friendly building design [0]
| states that "due to the lack of scientific evidence supporting
| its effectiveness, angled glass is no longer an acceptable way
| of compliance [for bird safety]".
|
| [0] https://www.toronto.ca/wp-
| content/uploads/2017/08/8d1c-Bird-... Page 30.
| yoyopa wrote:
| there's supposed to be a cane detection rail if the overhead
| surface is less than 7 feet
| alexvoda wrote:
| The ground floor really doesn't need to be like the rest.
| pfannkuchen wrote:
| Do blind people not have feet? I'm confused by the geometry of
| this story.
| constantly wrote:
| They're talking about the two groups approaching the raked
| wall from the inside versus the outside.
| pfannkuchen wrote:
| Ah I missed that thanks!
| [deleted]
| joe_guy wrote:
| On the inside your feet would meet the wall first. On the
| outside your head would. They were outside.
| logifail wrote:
| ...and - with apologies to all HN cat owners - I feel we might
| want to put building lethality into context by recalling that:
|
| "free-ranging domestic cats kill 1.3-4.0 billion birds and
| 6.3-22.3 billion mammals [in the USA] annually"
|
| https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms2380
| hypertexthero wrote:
| I side with the cats :)
|
| https://www.snopes.com/news/2021/08/06/dont-blame-cats-for-d...
| civilitty wrote:
| [flagged]
| dinkleberg wrote:
| I think it is safe to say, regardless of the total population,
| that 1000 birds dying in a single day as a result of an
| architectural decision is unfortunate.
| civilitty wrote:
| It is "unfortunate"
| bungeonsBaggins wrote:
| [flagged]
| civilitty wrote:
| It's a some birds flying into windows during a _mass
| migration of a million and a half birds_.
|
| Animal rights? Jesus christ. Go touch grass.
| lowkey_ wrote:
| It's proportionally like the equivalent death toll of NYC on
| 9/11 or slightly higher.
|
| In NYC, 1 in 4000 people died on 9/11. In Chicago, 1 in 2000
| birds died the other day. (Not to say it's equivalent at all,
| just that it's certainly a newsworthy event to the birds).
| ant6n wrote:
| Not to be a prick, but this is HumanNews.
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| It's actually Hacker News. There's nothing inherently human
| about being a hacker.
| ant6n wrote:
| Hacker News: 1000 bird hackers unsucessfully attempt to
| circumvent Chicago Convention center glass-wall.
| g232089 wrote:
| [flagged]
| fallinghawks wrote:
| Two websites that detail methods to prevent window strikes at
| home:
|
| https://abcbirds.org/solutions/prevent-home-collisions/
|
| Scroll down to Popular Blog Posts https://flap.org/
| zw123456 wrote:
| I had this happen at my place a number of times, my house is up
| on a hill with large windows facing the view. I didn't want to
| put stickers or other things that would detract from the view. A
| neighbor mentioned that they put up a couple of decorative
| hanging plants off to the side of the windows, didn't have to be
| right in front which would block the view. I opted for a couple
| of hanging outdoor art pieces (I have a brown thumb). It worked,
| my theory is it gives the birds something to gauge perspective on
| perhaps. I am not sure how that could work for skyscrapers, but
| for a home like mine it worked like a charm.
| beebeepka wrote:
| Were there any incidents before your measures? I may face a
| similar problem and it concerns me because I really don't want
| to harm anyone, including birds and insects.
| darwin2023 wrote:
| [flagged]
| NoblePublius wrote:
| [flagged]
| armarr wrote:
| Depends on which species we're talking about.
| adeelk93 wrote:
| North America's bird population has declined by 3 billion, or
| 30%, in the last 50 years
|
| https://www.birds.cornell.edu/home/bring-birds-back/
| taway1237 wrote:
| There's no shortage of people, and yet we frown upon
| unnecessary deaths. Your response sounds quite callous.
| beebeepka wrote:
| I checked this person's history. Unless you always see the
| good in people, no matter what, you will not be surprised
| rhizoma wrote:
| Toronto has had bird-friendly design guidelines since 2007.
| Surprised Chicago still hasn't implemented a solution.
| https://www.toronto.ca/city-government/planning-development/...
| nortirn wrote:
| [dead]
| xyst wrote:
| Wow only a few cities have replicated this. Is the associated
| cost of designing bird friendly buildings cost prohibitive? If
| so, need regulation to enforce this at state/local levels.
| yoyopa wrote:
| it's not cost prohibitive if you pay for it. but it's more
| expensive by a lot
| kasey_junk wrote:
| Both Chicago and Illinois have bird friendly building
| ordinances but the building in question was built in 1960 long
| before they existed. It's also massive so mitigations will take
| a long time to be applied.
| hh3k0 wrote:
| > It's also massive so mitigations will take a long time to
| be applied.
|
| Surely it cannot be too hard to slap 2 or 3 anti-collision
| decals on every window from the outside?
| perilunar wrote:
| You need more than 2 or 3 decals per window -- there should
| be 2" or less of vertical space and 4" or less of
| horizontal space between markings (the 2" x 4" rule).
| kasey_junk wrote:
| There are stickers on the building. It is a nearly 600000
| square foot building and the exterior is all windows.
|
| 1000 birds don't hit it _every day_ this was an exceptional
| even caused by specific conditions.
|
| The facility is actively trying new lighting solutions to
| mitigate bird strikes as that's the main issue.
| ethagknight wrote:
| A crew of window cleaners could hit it in under a week
| kasey_junk wrote:
| It has stickers
| i_love_cookies wrote:
| [dead]
| harywilke wrote:
| To give a sense of the scale of this building: Part of
| the convention center empty: https://www.google.com/maps/
| @41.8535338,-87.6124521,3a,75y,6...
|
| From what used to be Meigs Field. You have to back up
| quite a bit to see the entire building. It's very large,
| and right on the lake. https://www.google.com/maps/@41.85
| 38295,-87.6090441,3a,75y,2...
| hhh wrote:
| https://www.guardianglass.com/us/en/our-glass/guardian-bird1...
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(page generated 2023-10-07 23:00 UTC)