Glass is Hard on Birds

I saw this article in our local paper yesterday and tracked it down on the internet because I thought it might be of interest to my esteemed colleagues.

http://greatlakesecho.org/2019/05/13/chicago-a-confusing-death-trap-of-glass-and-light-for-birds/

Birds occasionally bounce off of our windows here as well, but they usually survive, at least long enough to fly away.  My parents in Palos Park used to have a problem with that, but they solved it by putting cardboard cutout pictures of hawks on some of their windows.  It happens so rarely here that we have never seen the necessity of doing anything like that.  I do have a home made camper rig that used to claim a partridge (ruffed grouse) or two a year until I turned it around so the windows faced into the brush instead of towards the open.  I would have done that sooner, but I didn't know about it.  My old dog Splash used to bring a dead partridge home once in awhile, but I didn't know where he was finding them until I saw one by the camper before Splash had gotten to it.

The ruffed grouse is probably the dumbest bird we have around here when it comes to crashing into things.  They get goofy in the spring when they're horny, and in the fall when they get drunk on fermented berries.  I used to think the part about the berries was a myth until a grouse killed himself by crashing into the one wall on our house that doesn't even have any windows.  When I opened it up, its crop was full of those little red berries that resemble currents.  I had seen those berries around here before, so I looked them up and found out that they are called "autumn berries".   They stay on the bush after the leaves have fallen off, and they do ferment to the point that they contain enough alcohol to intoxicate birds that eat them.

Just the other day a partridge challenged my tractor in our driveway, although it had enough sense to back down as I drew closer.  I could tell he was challenging me because he had the feathers on his neck all ruffed up, which is why they are called "ruffed grouse".   I have also seen them fan their tailfeathers out like a turkey, which I believe they do to impress the lady partridges.  I once watched one do that for a half hour or so from my deer blind in November.  There were several ladies present, but they were not impressed, probably because they normally breed in the spring.  This guy didn't seem to understand why the ladies were rejecting his advances.  Maybe he had eaten too many autumn berries that day.