We have a small pond. It used to be my D’s sandbox. When she outgrew it, we trun it into a pond. It’s been dry and the pond became a rare water source for birds. They drink out of fountain and take a bath. We have more birds in the yard this year than any other year. We also have two floor length picture windows that they are flying into. So far no casualties. Is there anything I can do other than put stickers on the window.
Close the blinds as much as possible.
When I was a child, we lived in a house with a sliding glass door and big windows on one side of the living room. The casualties typically added up to several birds a day (which my mother collected in a piece of aluminum foil every night and dumped in the trash). Only closing the blinds helped.
We have had luck with just lowering the wood blinds. We can leave them “open” in order to get light and to see outside, and it seems to provide the birds with enough information to let them know not to fly into the windows.
I agree with others, either curtains or blinds of some sort will let them know it is glass. You also may want to contact the audubon society or check out their website, they are really helpful with these kinds of questions.
I know you’re averse to stickers, but in a previous home we found that a hawk outline sticker worked wonders. You just need the one sticker to scare birds off, and it looked kinda cool so it wasn’t terrible having it up.
My neighbor uses these window alerts with good results.
Don’t clean the windows. Leave them a little dirty.
Hang a few strips of shiny silver Mylar adjacent to the window. Attach them at only one end so they can flutter around. The sparkling seems to scare the birds away.
I was the shadow of the waxwing slain/ By the false azure in the window pane
I was the smudge of ashen fluff–and I/ Lived on, flew on, in the reflected sky.
Nowhere near as highbrow of a reference as those of @Consolation and @Madison85 , but David Sedaris has a great chapter about managing neurotic songbirds that target the windows of his house in France in When You Are Engulfed in Flames … still laughing several months after reading.
Wonderful book recs. Put up a few pieces of tin foil. Rather distracting but better having bury a dead bird. Unfortunately, I can’t pull up the blind. It will block the view completely.