Bird-Friendly Campus

This artwork helps save birds

SUNY ESF is helping to do our part to protect birds by treating glass surfaces on our campus to prevent bird building collisions. Every year over 1 billion birds die in the United States after colliding with windows and other glassy surfaces. Most victims are songbirds who momentarily mistake glass reflections for habitat.

Simple, effective solutions are available, like the ones you see around the Syracuse campus. Patterns applied to glass creates “visual noise” that alert birds to the presence of a solid surface and can reduce building strikes by at least 90%.

SUNY ESF began treating glass windscreens on the Syracuse campus in 2025, to make our campus more bird friendly. Then, in 2026 we adopted a bird-friendly action item in the ESF Sustainability Action Plan that requires all new buildings and retrofits on campus to incorporate bird-friendly building design (SAP Action Item 15.5). This puts SUNY ESF in league with other universities and colleges like Yale University and the University of Pennsylvania that have committed to making their campuses safe for birds.

Efforts to make SUNY ESF more bird friendly are a collaboration between ESF undergraduate and graduate students, the Office of Sustainability, the Division of Sustainable Facilities & Operations, the Office of Communications and Marketing, the Guy Baldassarre Birding Club, and other community members. Advocacy, pilot-test mitigation, and data collection projects on campus were led by two ESF students: Meredith Barges (PhD, exp ‘27) and Emily McClary (BS, ‘28).

Like What You See?

In September 2026, ESF installed semi-permanent collision mitigation films to prevent bird collisions on five glass surfaces on campus before the start of peak fall bird migration. Made with 100% post-consumer recycled PET, these treatments feature recognizable bird species that are local to New York, such as the Northern Flicker and White-throated Sparrow. Many of these species are highly susceptible to building collisions. The films should last 15 years or longer.

The ESF Office of Communications and Marketing created and digitized the bird-friendly art in the spring of 2026. Each species featured is identified on the mural by its common name. The project team hopes that visitors enjoy some fun, nontraditional birding while on campus! 

An initial “Make ESF More Bird Friendly” glass mitigation pilot project was launched in spring 2025. Led by Meredith Barges, the project brought together ESF students and local artists to create five mitigation murals using white acrylic paint and paint pens. Katie Mulligan (MFA, ’26), a local environmental illustrator and former student at Syracuse University, created three mitigation murals, using designs that celebrate the local ecosystems, with nods to the American Woodcock and Mourning Dove. Meredith created the mural featuring a Ruby-throated Hummingbird flying over reeds in front of Jahn Laboratory and collaborated with Leila Kaufman (BS ’26), then MOSA e-board member, to create a birch tree mural in front of Baker Laboratory.

While ESF’s painted mitigation murals were only planned to last one bird migration season, the treatments lasted over 16 months before they were washed off to install the semi-permanent mitigation films.

 

Found an injured or dead bird on campus?

Log a report on the SUNY ESF Community Bird Collision Project