Philly’s push to help birds avoid windows just got a windfall

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A small organization trying to make Philadelphia safe for birds just got 10 times larger.

Bird Safe Philly advocates for building owners to make their windows less likely to attract bird collisions, typically by applying decals to make the glass more visible to flying birds and turning lights off at night.

The group started in 2020 after a freakish night of Hitchcockian proportions when an estimated 1,500 birds were killed in the span of a few hours by colliding with glass. Bird Safe Philly quickly formed through a partnership with several area environmental organizations: Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University, Audubon Mid-Atlantic, Delaware Valley Ornithological Club, National Audubon Society, Valley Forge Audubon Society and Liberty Bird Alliance.

Since forming, the volunteer-led Bird Safe Philly has worked with eight property owners to retrofit their windows, including the high-profile Sister Cities Café on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway near Logan Circle. Most recently, it applied decals to the Andorra branch of the Free Library of Philadelphia.

Bird Safe Philly also coordinates Lights Out Philly, part of National Audubon Society’s Lights Out program to shut off building lights overnight, and coordinates dozens of volunteers each spring and fall migration season to monitor hot spots for bird collisions at downtown buildings. They count the dead and send injured birds to the Wildlife Clinic at the Schuylkill Center for Environmental Education for rehabilitation.

“Birds do not see glass. They don’t recognize that it’s a solid surface,” said Leigh Altadonna, a retired public school administrator who now coordinates Bird Safe Philly.  “They might be able to see right through to the other side and think they’re flying into a tree.”

Bird Safe Philly’s annual budget will increase roughly tenfold as the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation has awarded the group a three-year, $496,100 grant. The award is a matching grant, meaning Bird Safe Philly can expect to work with $994,900 over the next few years.

“We have raised money annually with what we call a Birdathon each May. We have had great people donate,” Altadonna said. “We’ve raised five figures, not six or seven figures.”

The National Fish and Wildlife Foundation is a private philanthropy that operates in partnership with the U.S. Department of the Interior. The Bird Safe Philly grant is part of a $12.5 million package of grants awarded through the foundation’s Delaware Watershed Conservation Fund, which also includes improvements to the Cooper River Waterfront Trail in New Jersey, stormwater management around the Wissahickon Creek and planning for phase two of the South Philadelphia Wetlands Park.

Altadonna said a big part of Bird Safe Philly is making property owners, elected officials and the general public aware of the death toll caused by windows. Much of the grant will be going toward public awareness.

“We did a program in 2017 at the Academy of Natural Sciences with about 100 or 120 people in attendance. It was amazing how many people did not know the scale of the problem,” he said. “We now know from studies that the estimate is at least a billion birds, probably more, die each year in the United States from colliding with windows.”

Bird Safe Philly is part of a statewide program to encourage municipalities to adopt bird conservation programs, calling them “bird towns.” To be a bird town, municipalities must complete public projects in five categories, including establishing an environmental advisory council, provide homeowner support to practice sustainable landscaping practices and setting aside areas of public parkland for passive recreation uses such as hiking and birdwatching.

One of the most recent bird town converts is Media, Pennsylvania, which started hosting public events for bird conservation in 2024.

“I feel like the world has just become disconnected from nature,” said Julie Smith, a member of Media’s Environmental Advisory Council at the time. “The more resources we have the better.”

According to the Pennsylvania Bird Town map, there are 99 bird towns in Pennsylvania. Altadomna hopes the city of Philadelphia will become the 100th.

“Philadelphia has something on the order of 543,000 structures in the city limits,” he said. “That’s a lot of buildings. We’re not going to retrofit all of them. We can’t. But we’ll retrofit the ones that we have a rubric and we’re working on an application so that we have criteria to select buildings.

“Education, as a retired educator, I think is an important piece of this,” Altadonna said.