A thud at the window of my study as I was typing away at my latest bird column. I didn’t need to go to the panes, and look outside to see what had made the noise. I was pretty sure it was a bird strike.
Although I try to shield my windows – to reduce reflection of green leaf and sky which might lead birds to believe they are flying into open space – my home is prone to occasional bird strike. The house sits on the edge of the bush and birds in the frenzy and delirium of the mating season in spring and summer, or fleeing predators in winter, often are not aware of its dangers.
Hearing the thud, I opened the window to look outside. There on the path was a silvereye, wings flailing, struggling to right itself on spindly legs. I lifted it into cupped hands and brought it inside.
A bird in the hand gives an intimate connection with a fragile creature of the wild. There it was soft and warm in my hands, its little beady eyes staring up at me. I marvelled at this tiny bird’s beauty which is never fully gleaned when the silvereyes are in fast flight, flitting about the grevilleas and bottlebrushes.
The ring around the eye, of course, which is white and not silver. The beautiful mossy green feathers on the back, the grey on the chest and belly, and the orange flashes on its flanks, the extent of which distinguishes the Tasmanian sub-species of silvereye from those found on the mainland.
A bird in the hand, stunned, blinking. I hoped it would recover in a box in a quiet corner of the house, planning a trip to the vet if it did not get to its feet. The bird, sadly, was clearly severely injured and within a few seconds its head drooped and flopped across my fingers.
It was another corpse for the bird cemetery under the wattles at the end of my garden, but thankfully there have been just a handful over the 18 years I have lived in the Waterworks Valley.
By coincidence, the latest bird strike came as BirdLife Australia was launching a campaign to minimise bird strikes which, across the world, kill colossal numbers of birds each year.
Figures of Australian mortality are hard to come by but extensive research in the United States suggests that up to a billion birds a year might die there from striking the fabric of buildings, windows included. In Britain, it’s estimated 30 million birds die each year in this way.
BirdLife Australia’s Birds in Backyard Program is investigating the scale of the bird-strike problem across the country, including both window and car collisions. Research is being conducted not only to establish the extent but to devise solutions to minimise the bird-strike toll.
The organisation is asking its members and the public in general to report bird shrikes involving window and cars, using their online survey at https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/aussiebirdstrike