Invisible killer. Saving billions of birds from windows.

 

SOLID AIR

Dr. Klem captures over four decades of research experience and pleas for change.

As useful and attractive as sheet glass and plastic are in human buildings, the windows they make are indiscriminately lethal and devastating to free-flying birds.

This book describes the cause and breadth of this universal problem and how to solve it. Detailed objective observations and experiments reveal that birds behave as if clear and reflective windows are invisible to them. Alarmingly, among the dead are the fittest individuals in species populations.

Science has documented that a decline of a third of the annual North American bird population, approximately 3 billion individuals, has occurred since 1970, and one of the principal mortality sources is windows. However agreeable and possible, citizens the world over are asked to take action and join in making the human built environment safe for bird life as one of Nature’s most beautiful, useful, and spiritually uplifting creations of planet Earth.

Unlike the complexities of other environmental challenges, such as climate change, this important conservation issue for birds and people can be solved, and the means to do so are described within the pages of this work to guide this worthy effort.

Copies can be purchased from the publisher at hancockhouse.com/products/ solid-air

Available Sept 15

$24.95

About the Author

Daniel Klem, Jr. is Sarkis Acopian Professor of Ornithology and Conservation Biology in the Department of Biology at Muhlenberg College, Allentown, Pennsylvania. For the last 47 years and continuing to the present he studies, writes, and teaches about birds. His most prestigious awards are the students and professional colleagues he has interested in bird study. He guided and encouraged Sarkis Acopian of Easton, Pennsylvania to financially support the establishment of the Acopian Center for Ornithology at Muhlenberg College, and the Acopian Center for Conservation Learning at the Hawk Mountain Sanctuary Association, Kempton, Pennsylvania.