McCormick Place Lakeside Center, a convention center in Chicago, was the site of a deadly bird strike during fall migration in 2023 when 1000 birds were killed in one night from glass collisions. The building is Chicago’s easternmost structure on the lakefront, sitting squarely along one of the region’s busiest migratory pathways for birds. The event drew widespread attention to the threat that glass poses to birds. Within days, the center committed to closing drapes overnight and turned off unnecessary outside lights but wanted a longer-term solution. That’s when they learned about Feather Friendly® Bird Collision Deterrent Markers. Over three months, the company installed the polka-dot film on McCormick Place’s 120,000 square feet of glass.
Since installing the Feather Friendly® film at McCormick Place last summer, bird deaths during the recent fall migration period have decreased by 95% compared with previous seasons. Since then, 9 more projects have been lined up in Chicago.
Feather Friendly® film was used at Sister Cities Café in Philadelphia as part of the Bird Safe Philly program. At Sister Cities Cafe, volunteer bird window collision monitors documented 78 collisions in which birds died or were stunned from 2021 through the spring of 2023. The café has major reduction in bird strikes since the film was installed.
Read more about Chicago: https://www.wbez.org/environment/2025/01/09/bird-collisions-down-mccormick-place-environment
Read more about Feather Friendly products: https://featherfriendly.com/
You can also visit our website for more information about the bird-window collision problem: https://valleyforgeaudubon.org/bird-window-collisions/
