For the past couple of years, every time Master of Environmental Studies (MES) student Joe Durrance would see a dead bird on campus, he’d take a picture of it, note the date and location, and try to identify the species. He logged the death of the birds—caused from their collisions with glass windows—but knew he needed to do more.

“We’re on the Atlantic Flyway,” Durrance says. “We get a lot of migrants. Some of the bird species I have found that are not really common around here are the brown creeper, the red eyed vireo, and the black-and-white warbler.”

Birds, especially migrants flying through Philadelphia, don’t recognize glass on tall buildings as a solid material. They see it as a passage, or simply see the reflection of the sky.

It wasn’t long before Durrance was connected to Chloe Cerwinka, landscape planner in Facilities and Real Estate Services (FRES), and University Landscape Architect Robert Lundgren, who had already been working with Audubon Pennsylvania and the Philadelphia Zoo to tackle the bird-strike issue.

“With the Climate Action Plan 2.0, there’s now a goal to reduce bird strikes all over campus,” Cerwinka says.

“It’s something we have to do,” Lundgren adds. “We have to be more responsible.”

The duo from FRES became Durrance’s advisers on a project to implement window treatments at two existing buildings to make the glass more visible to birds. The window film Penn has approved consists of white, horizontal lines that will be applied about two inches apart. The treatment is said to be durable for at least 10 years.

Durrance received a grant from Penn’s Green Fund to help subsidize the window treatment. As part of Durrance’s MES capstone project, he will be monitoring and collecting data from the pilot sites on campus, including the School of Veterinary Medicine and the Johnson Pavilion in the Perelman School of Medicine. (Durrance knows the bird-strike issue well at Penn Medicine, as he works there in IT.)

The beginning stages to retrofit the windows in the two named “hotspots” for bird deaths will begin the week after Commencement. Lundgren says the project wouldn’t be possible without the collaborative support from Kim Kopple, director of planning, design, and construction at Penn Vet, and Eric Weckel, executive director of space planning and operations at Penn Medicine.

Durrance has proposed ideas to get the Penn community involved in reporting additional areas of concern for strikes, as well as determining whether the window film is working.

“This will make a difference,” Lundgren says. “And once we get the blueprint, so to speak, of this pilot, then we can make a case for if we need to apply it to more buildings on campus.”