How Austin is making buildings safer for migrating birds

Nearly two billion birds pass through the state of Texas during migration. However, light pollution and glass-covered buildings in Texas cities create deadly hazards for these birds, with building collisions accounting for one billion bird deaths each year in the United States alone. Because of their reflective surfaces, birds mistake windows for open skies or trees and try to fly through them, leading to fatal crashes.

To combat this, the Austin City Council passed a resolution late last year to investigate ways to promote bird-friendly building design features and build upon an existing resolution that encourages the reduction of light pollution. One key bird-friendly design feature is bird-safe glass, or glass that remains partially transparent to humans but is more visible to birds. This can be achieved by applying special window films or using techniques like etching or fritting to add texture to the surface. Making buildings bird-friendly involves more than just fixing windows, as strong artificial lighting from buildings can attract large numbers of birds at night, making them more susceptible to building collisions.

A local example of bird-safe design in action is the IT Building at Austin-Bergstrom International Airport. The windows feature bird-friendly treatments, including etched or dotted patterns that make the glass more visible to birds, as well as colorful bars positioned in front of the glass to prevent birds from attempting to fly through. Thanks to these efforts, the building has achieved a material threat factor score of just 13 (as determined by the American Bird Conservancy), well below the threshold of 30 that qualifies a building as bird-friendly.

Photo by Staff | TPIN

Photo by Staff | TPIN

While Austin initially addressed bird safety with their ‘Lights Out’ resolution in 2021, making it so that non-essential lighting in downtown city buildings is turned off during peak nighttime migration periods, this resolution directs the City Manager to explore the integration of bird-friendly building design features and expand the ‘Lights Out’ protocol outside of the downtown area.

Simply put, this resolution calls for the city to conduct research on the feasibility of bird-safe architecture and policy. It allows the city to figure out things like whether these features will be voluntary or mandatory, as well as whether or not buildings should be retrofitted. While the City Manager’s recommendations had an original deadline of June 1st, the city’s Watershed Protection Department is requesting a postponement until December to accommodate their stakeholder engagement process.

Just last week, the Watershed Protection Department presented the Austin Design Commission with examples of bird-friendly policies, such as New York City’s Local Law 15, which requires that all new buildings and major exterior glazing replacements comply with bird-friendly design standards.

With its continued efforts to explore and implement bird-friendly policies, Austin is positioning itself as a leader in bird-safe urban design in Texas.