Less than half of injured or stunned birds survive collisions with windows, new research has found, which means as many as one billion birds may be killed each year from flying into buildings in the United States.

The discovery was made by a team of ornithologists with the NYC Bird Alliance, the Fordham University Graduate School of Arts and Sciences and the Max Planck Institute for Geoanthropology.

“Even common avian species in North America are declining, so identifying and addressing threats to bird populations is critical for the conservation of not only individual species, but the ecosystems they belong to. Collisions with buildings are a leading anthropogenic cause of death for birds in the United States,” the authors wrote in the study. “Affecting over 50 avian families and hundreds of species; building collisions kill between 365 million and 1 billion birds a year in the United States alone and pose a significant threat to birds in other […]