September
20, 2018 by Paul Mayne, University of Western Ontario
Brandon
Samuels plans to set up cameras this January in hopes of catching footage of
birds crashing into windows across campus. Honestly, he really is a nice guy –
it's for science.
The
Neuroscience Ph.D. student is working on ways to help mitigate the number of
birds colliding with large glass structures on campus – and beyond – by better
understanding the visual perspective of the birds prior to impact.
"We
don't know what a bird is looking at when it's flying," said Samuels, who
recently completed his masters at Western. "There is a statistical way of
looking at how many birds collide – where and when. But I'm interested from the
perspective of morphology. I want to look at it from the bird's eyes – how they
see, how their vision contributes to being able to see or not see an obstacle.
"Bird
vision is very different from species to species. You have owls with huge eyes
on the front their head and you have little birds with eyes on the sides of
their head. You would imagine they see the world quite differently."
There are
a number of reasons that may cause a bird to fly into a window.
They could be trying to pass through an area as if it was not there. Maybe they
cannot distinguish the actual natural landscape from what is reflected on
building surfaces. Maybe they cannot navigate in open spaces when taller
structures reflect the blue of the sky.
"Unlike
a downtown core, Western's campus has a lot of green space, which is lovely. We
enjoy it; the birds enjoy it. But when you have glass like this, mixed in with
trees and green cover, that's where the risk really lies."
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