North American Songbird Saving Animals From Extinction (SAFE) Program
The Salisbury Zoo is part of the North American Songbird Saving Animals From Extinction (SAFE) program. This program encourages member facilities to minimize bird collisions with glass at their facilities and encourage visitors to adopt best practices at home, increasing effective messaging regarding domestic cat impacts on wildlife, preserving and building native habitats on members’ grounds and in the communities they serve, reducing contaminants that affect North American songbirds, increasing bird-friendly behavior through education and creating empathy, and ending the trafficking of North American songbirds.
The Salisbury Zoo is planning to install additional songbird nest boxes on grounds this spring and started its first bird-friendly glass project in 2023.
Fun fact: Both Baltimore orioles and ravens are considered songbirds, but of the two, the orioles are the ones that migrate.
Help birds at home
Researchers have estimated that 300 million – 1 billion birds die from collisions with buildings every year. By taking a few simple steps, we can decrease that number. Here are a few suggestions for helping avoid bird collisions with your home or office windows.
- Let your windows get dirty
- Install exterior window screens
- Use tempera paint to paint art or repeating patterns on the outside of your windows
- Hang parachute cord on the outside of your window
- Install pre-made window decals and film
To learn more, visit these links:
- American Bird Conservancy – Ideas for making your home windows bird-safe
- Audubon – Reducing collisions with glass
Lights Out
Did you know that the majority of birds migrate at night? As birds fly over brightly-lit areas, they can become disoriented, exhaust themselves and collide with buildings.
This is an easy issue to tackle. We can address it together by:
- Turing off exterior decorative lighting
- Making sure our exterior lights are facing down
- Using “warmer” colored lights and avoiding blue/white lights
- Keeping our outside lights as dim as possible
- Turning off interior lights or closing the curtains
To learn more, visit these links:
Learn about local birds
Bird-friendly glass at the Salisbury Zoo
If you scanned the QR code at the North American Ducks exhibit, then you already know why the glass at that exhibit has dots all over it. If not, visit the exhibit to see how we’re helping native birds at the Salisbury Zoo. The two-inch-by-two-inch white dot pattern on the outside of the window is to prevent bird collisions. The dots break up the reflections that birds see and are close enough together that the birds will not try to fly between them. However, this pattern still allows guests to see the animals in the exhibit.