

"It was daytime. I have bird feeders in a tree near the window where a bird crashed, fell to the ground, and an outdoor cat got it," said Pynn, 60, who lives in the Outer Sunset and is an executive assistant in the legal department at a downtown auditing and consulting firm.

"The more I learned about bird strikes, the more I learned how completely avoidable they are if only humans would pay more attention."

Pynn, who is also on the Golden Gate Audubon Society's board of directors, is among the first San Francisco residents to sign up for a program being rolled out this week that is designed to curtail bird deaths from crashing into windows in residential buildings.

Despite the consternation about birds being killed by wind turbines, many more die from flying into windows or glass buildings than from turbines, cell towers and the like, according to the American Bird Conservancy.

Window crashes kill at least 100 million and possibly as many as 1 billion birds each year in North America, the conservancy reported. No one knows how many of those deaths are happening at houses and apartment buildings in San Francisco, but the City Planning Department wants to find out.

The department's new program, which comes on the cusp of the fall migration season, asks residents to check around their home at least once a week for dead or injured birds. Participants would then record that information on a city website so planners can track the most dangerous areas for birds.

Volunteers will get a decal certifying them as a "bird-friendly resident," can be entered in a raffle with prizes still to be determined, and can get city advice and subsidies for window treatments to help reduce bird collisions.

Birds can't see glass, but window crashes can be addressed by simple measures like installing insect screens or hanging strings in front of large picture windows, officials said. More sophisticated approaches include applying textured film over windows or completely replacing windows with fritted glass. The city will offer a limited number of subsidies to residents with hazardous windows larger than 24 square feet.

Funding for the program is part of $140,000 the city is putting toward bird safety efforts over a four-year period ending in June 2015. Half of the money came from a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service grant.

San Francisco has a Lights Out for Birds campaign encouraging people to turn off lights or draw shades at night to help birds, many of whom navigate by the stars, to stay on track during fall and spring migrations. It also passed strong bird-friendly building requirements in 2011, but those primarily apply to new commercial buildings, or large additions to them, within bird flight paths, or near parks or the shoreline.

Those buildings would need to treat certain windows with fritting, netting, stencils, frosted glass or something similar to deter birds. Citywide, free-standing glass, like that lining rooftop decks or elevated walkways, has to be treated with a similar method if the individual panes are 24 square feet in size or larger.

"So far, there hasn't been enough scientific data gathered on bird-window collisions in urban residential settings," said Cindy Margulis, executive director of the Golden Gate Audubon Society. And homes, after all, are typically the type of buildings near open spaces like Golden Gate Park, the Presidio and Ocean Beach.

Bird program

Residents who want to participate or learn more about the Bird-Friendly Monitoring and Certification Program can contact the Planning Department at (415) 575-9017 or
