Park City resident Eileen Gallagher is a self-described “bird nerd.” But she’s in good company.

“Funny enough, people in Utah apparently say, ‘You’re either a birder or you’re a birder and don’t know it yet,’” she said.

That was the case with her, first joining the unofficial birding community during COVID. She’s seen all kinds, like flickers, nut hatches, finches, sparrows and robins, but magpies are some of her favorites. Loud and, sure, obnoxious, but they’re hilarious, Gallagher said. 

“If you sit still and watch them for long enough, you’ll see them do crazy, clever things,” she said.

She loves attracting these bird visitors to her yard, drawn in by native plants, feeders and bird baths, but knew that window strikes could be a risk to the little animals. So signing up for Bird Safe Utah’s free window-film installation was an easy decision.

Bird Safe Utah is a donor-funded conservation program that grew out of the Great Salt Lake Audubon Bird Window Collision Working Group. Through free home assessments and window-film installations, the program is meant to “close the gap on the ecological trap,” said founding chair Punita Koustubhan.

Bird collisions occur because birds perceive reflections differently from humans. Trees, shrubs and sky reflected in glass appear to birds as a continuous habitat rather than a solid barrier, so they fly toward it at deadly speeds. 

But there’s technology to prevent that from happening.

“I’m a pediatrician, so I’m all about preventing harm,” said Gallagher, who also serves on the Park City Board of Education. “When we have ways of preventing harm that are minor and not an inconvenience and can make a big impact, even though it is a different species, that seems worthwhile to me.”

Hers is a similar mindset to the one that drove Koustubhan to start the program, stemming from her own personal experience as a Utah homeowner.

“I started having window strikes when I moved into a house in the Avenues, and I did not know what to do about it,” Koustubhan said.

A conservation biologist with a background in wildlife rehabilitation, Koustubhan said she began researching the scale of the problem after burying almost 14 birds that had collided with her home’s windows.

“When I lived back in New York, we had an emergency clinic for wild birds, and most of them were window strikes, and a good chunk of them did not make it,” she said. “When I deep dived into that, I found out 95% of birds that hit our windows don’t make it, and we lose about a billion birds in North America alone every year. Forty-four percent of those are at residences.”

Koustubhan used her own home “as a guinea pig” and sampled a variety of products before finding a solution that effectively prevented collisions. 

“I already was running a committee called the Bird Window Collision Working Group and then realized that we need to take this from education into conservation action and just start helping people with boots on the ground,” she said. “I thought, ‘This is something that I could do through Audubon to help other people because I can’t be the only person that found it hard to figure this out.'”

So Bird Safe Utah was born, relying on donor support, trained volunteers and interns to provide free installations that would otherwise cost homeowners roughly $5 per square foot plus labor.

The organization primarily installs products called Bird Divert and Feather Friendly, Koustubhan said, which have been tested through flight tunnel studies conducted by Cornell University’s ornithology researchers. Depending on a home’s location and lighting conditions, volunteers recommend either an ultraviolet material that is nearly invisible to people or small white dots that break up reflections.

“The UV dots, which are clear, only work if it’s a sunny location,” Koustubhan said. “That’s why we also do window assessments that are at no cost.”

The treatments must be applied to the exterior of windows because that is where reflections occur.

“When we put the film up, it breaks up that reflection,” she said. “I’ve seen (birds) come straight for the glass and make a turn and swoop up and go right over my house.”

For homeowners who prefer not to apply film directly to their windows, the organization also recommends Acopian BirdSavers, which use vertical strands of paracord suspended in front of the glass to interrupt reflections.

One common concern is appearance, but Koustubhan said most homeowners quickly stop noticing the patterns. Like Gallagher, who’d tried plenty of other more obnoxious options, even letting kids paint on her windows during bird peak seasons in May and September.

“You can actually see through them and can barely tell they’re there. In fact, my husband didn’t notice when I put them on several of the windows at first,” she laughed.

And while there may be a hint of hesitation before the install, Koustubhan said that, without fail, homeowners are happy to have put the birds first.

“Every time we put it up, everyone goes, ‘I actually like it, and I feel so reassured that I won’t hear the dreaded thud,’” she said. “We just want the birds to win.”

As the program expands to the Wasatch Back, Gallagher said the community’s respect for the outdoors — which brought her to the area 12 years ago — should lead to greater participation. 

“We’re people who like to be outside, and so we want to care for the outside, recognizing that if one is honest, it’s a reciprocal relationship,” she said. “Most things that are good for birds are good for humans, things like clean water, conserving water, protecting habitats, encouraging population growth of birds, which is what we’re doing when we’re preventing them from getting injured by our windows.”

As Bird Safe Utah expands into communities in Summit and Wasatch counties, Koustubhan hopes each participating home contributes to a safer migration corridor.

“We’re creating flight paths through our communities to keep birds safe,” she said. “It’s going to take a lot of windows to make this a big impact, although one home at a time is all we can do.”

To learn more and request an install, visit birdsafeutah.org.

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