Here’s what NYC building owners can do to prevent fatal bird collisions after the death of Flaco
In the wake of Flaco the owl’s death, conservationists are encouraging New Yorkers — not to mention building owners — not just to mourn, but to act as well.
The beloved Eurasian eagle-owl passed away Friday after colliding with an Upper West Side co-op building at 267 W. 89th St. Striking buildings is a leading cause of death for wild birds that kills a quarter of a million in New York City annually.
Flaco — who had been on the lam since breaking free of the Central Park Zoo last February, after his enclosure was vandalized — was 13 months old. His necropsy results listed his official cause of death as “acute traumatic injury.”
While the mean city streets were never going to be an easy home for the exotic avian escapee, there are numerous easy steps local real estate owners — as well as people who call New York home — can take to make city real estate more bird-friendly.
“We want to make sure his death is not in vain,” New York City Audubon executive director Jessica G. Wilson told The Post of the deceased owl’s legacy. “There are easy steps that everyday New Yorkers can take to protect birds and reduce collisions with windows. The threats that Flaco faced are ones wild birds face every day.”
Here are a few ways to commemorate Flaco, the little bird who, in Wilson’s words, managed to “thrive somewhere he wasn’t supposed to be.”
Put up window adhesives
By applying certain types of stickers to building exteriors, New Yorkers can help prevent birds from crashing into their homes and offices. This primarily helps with breaking up reflections. As it stands, birds fly into windows because they mistake reflections for the horizon.
“The film should be applied to the outside of the windows,” said Wilson, adding that “it’s not enough to have decals randomly spaced on the windows, it needs to be a patterned matrix applied to the outside of the window to be most effective.”
(There are plenty available for purchase online, but it’s also quite easy to make your own.)
Turn off the lights
Birds often become distracted by building lights, so by turning them off when not in use people are actively helping birds not become disoriented.
(“The amount of light emitted by a building is a strong predictor of the number of collisions it will cause, more so than building height,” the American Bird Conservancy noted in a 2019 bird-friendly building design report.)
In addition to turning your own lights out and making your own windows safe, “you can ask your building to do the same,” and support legislation that makes it mandatory, suggested Wilson.
New and renovated NYC buildings are already required to use bird-friendly glass thanks to Local Law 15, which was implemented in 2020. In light of Flaco’s death, legislators have renewed a push for two bills aimed at increasing protections for birds, rebranding one the FLACO Act (“Feathered Lives Also Count”).
For instance, the Javits Center on the West Side has a bird-friendly facade, as well as a green roof up top to help birds navigate the glassy structure.
Report bird deaths
In addition to making buildings more bird safe, “There’s also things that individuals can do to collect data to help us collect birds” that have died, Wilson said.
See a dead bird injured or lying on the ground? Note where you saw it on the website DBird.org.
“Those collision records are essential,” said Wilson, and “you only need to know your intersection.”
For those who want to go a step further, bring the bird to 565 Columbus Ave. in Manhattan, where members of the nonprofit Wild Bird Fund rehabilitate “patients” ranging from opposums to falcons.
