AMHERST — Peregrine falcons, blackpoll warblers and northern parulas are among birds listed in the Massachusetts Endangered Species Act that have perished since 2023 after flying into buildings on the University of Massachusetts campus.
Those Endangered, Threatened and Special Concern Species birds are among 218 birds and 50 species, including the more common song sparrow, white-breasted nuthatch and gray catbird, identified as being killed in collisions with 23 buildings monitored by Bird Safe UMass.
To address this epidemic — with more than 1 billion bird fatalities involving windows across the United States each year — the interdisciplinary group of ecologists, architects and historians recently opened the exhibit “Reflections On Collisions” on Thursday, April 2, inside a gallery in the Olver Design Building, one of the most dangerous buildings for birds.
With some of the data on display, alongside bird carcasses preserved inside a cabinet and some of the architectural solutions, the exhibit tells the story of how UMass contributes to the harm caused to birds, mostly during the spring and fall, as they take flight and migrate to and from their breeding grounds.
Rozy Bathrick, the lead curator and doctoral student in Organismic & Evolutionary Biology, said that the project brings into the physical space what makes a building dangerous, and the creative solutions and remediations that are possible.
Around 280 students spent the past three years surveying the buildings and collecting bird carcasses.
“Bird-window collisions are incredibly sad to witness and a pressing conservation concern, but they are also one threat that each and every person can do something about,” Bathrick said. “We want this exhibit to educate and bring hope.”
While tragic, Bathrick said the university researchers are making a positive use of the carcasses, which will be preserved in the Natural History Collection on campus. The student-prepared museum specimens led to the photogrammetry to create three-dimensional representations of the birds.
Some of the solutions involve using different types of windows, with various glass on display, including windows from a 19th century building in Shelburne Falls, showing how the glass from that time didn’t confuse birds the way today’s glass does.
The work helped UMass recently secure a $173,404 grant from the Healey-Driscoll administration to address the most dangerous buildings, which in addition to the neighboring Studio Arts Building includes the Isenberg School of Management, across the street, and the W.E.B DuBois Library.
“These buildings were developed before we knew the extent of the problem,” Bathrick said.
This money will also expand monitoring to other high-collision sites on campus and include an outreach and education component across campus and with surrounding communities.
Fortunately, in addition to the grant, the work has paid off with buildings under construction. “The new buildings have bird-safe glass incorporated into their design,” Bathrick said.
The quickest and cheapest solution is the plastic sheets with white dots that can be affixed to windows. “Stickers are incredibly effective,” Bathrick said.
Besides the window decals, Bathrick said lights could be turned off in buildings during migration, and more responsible habitats can surround buildings.
Alex Vaddi, a sophomore in Building Construction Technology, said he’s been exposed to how the effects of the built environment should be incorporated into design.
“We often neglect the idea of wildlife,” Vaddi said.
He likes what has happened at the Studio Arts Building. There, the windows are covered in adhesives featuring a design celebrating bird life on campus, created by Studio Arts Bachelor of Fine Arts student Margaret Lepeshkin.
“The decals on the Studio Arts Building are gorgeous,” Vaddi said.
The gallery talk at the exhibit opening began with a somber report from Nathan Senner, an assistant professor in the Department of Environmental Conservation. Senner showed a chart indicating that the overall bird population in the United States has dropped by 2.9 billion since 1970.
“The bad news is bird populations are not doing very well,” Senner said.
There have been positives, such as identifying problems with pesticides, like DDT, killing birds, and no longer harvesting birds that produced feathers for hats. Still, birds are under pressure.
“They are now facing threats that are so diverse that overcoming them is not a certainty,” Senner said.
While windows are problematic, they only represent about a quarter of the 4 billion birds a year that are killed by cats.
Senner also praised Monica Mestre, then an undergraduate and now a graduate student in the Department of Environmental Conservation, who helped launch the Make UMass Bird-Friendly initiative, and Meg Vickery, senior lecturer and undergraduate program director in the History of Art and Architecture Department, who promoted the bird-friendly efforts in her architectural history classes.
“We hope that the exhibit can help demonstrate how all of that energy and interest has come together to bring change to the UMass campus,” Senner said.
Among those visiting the exhibit was Andrew S. Yang, an artist and environmental biologist.
Yang created “Flying Gardens of Maybe,” in which he has taken seeds that birds carry and grown plants from them, showing another dimension of what is lost when birds are killed. Other seeds he has washed and placed into bird feeders.
He described the exhibit as thoughtful and compelling.
The show will be up through May 1.
