Have you ever seen a dead bird on campus? The Georgia Tech main campus is a hotspot for bird-window collisions, particularly near the MoSE, ISYE, and Library buildings. Birdwatchers @ GT is collaborating with the SOS Bird Safe Campus project to teach members of the campus community how to find, report, and collect victims of bird-window collisions on campus so that we may identify problematic buildings. Join us at MoSE for a crash course in dBird.org, the efforts of the Bird Safe Campus team, and the safe collection of carcasses for professional ornithological analysis by Georgia Audubon.

You don’t need to attend this event to help. dBird.org uses a simple form to collect information on the time, date, and location of bird injuries or deaths. You can use it anywhere, but reports made on campus will specifically help inform our mitigation efforts.

Join the Bird Reporting GroupMe for more updates and information!

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Our itinerary will be roughly as follows:

9am: meet behind the MoSE building (see map) and demo the dBird.org submission process

10:15am: walk to the Kendeda Building, one of the only buildings on campus with bird-friendly glass

10:30am: walk to the ISYE buildings and examine the glass bridges

10:45am: walk to the Boggs building and deposit any collected carcasses

We will not cover every building on campus. Participants are encouraged to monitor buildings on their own schedule and spread the word about dBird.org.

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Most birds migrate at night. Brightly-lit cities can disorient these long-distance travelers and draw them into deadly enclosed environments where windows look like escape routes. By reducing transparency and reflectivity of problematic windows through the application of anti-collision film and opting to dim the lights at night, many of these deadly encounters can be avoided. Consider turning the lights off at night in academic and residential spaces to reduce risk to birds during migration seasons (fall and spring). An overview of the issue may be found on Wikipedia. More information as well as collision forecasts and alerts for Georgia can be accessed through Georgia Audubon’s Lights Out Georgia initiative.