Bird Safe Harrisburg
Collision Monitoring
Please join our Spring 2026 collision monitoring program! If you are interested in volunteering with the Bird Safe Harrisburg committee, please let us know, here! Read on to learn more.
Collisions with glass kill between 1.28-3.46 billion birds in the United States annually, the highest directly measurable anthropogenic cause of avian mortality second only to outdoor and feral domestic cats. Prevention is attainable by ensuring that glass is bird-safe. These retrofits and best practices are relatively easy for a homeowner to achieve, but solutions often become trickier for commercial, institutional, and government buildings. Without community support, data, and ultimately, laws, bird collision prevention with these types of buildings and structures can be difficult to solve.
Bird Safe Harrisburg’s collision monitoring program serves two primary purposes: collect data and save birds - and YOU can help us in this effort.
Community Science
Data collection to observe when, where, and what species are being impacted by window strikes is extremely valuable. Appalachian Audubon’s Bird Safe Harrisburg uses iNaturalist to collect this data. Anyone in the greater Harrisburg area, from Carlisle to Hershey and from Elizabethville to Elizabethtown, can submit data to the community bird-strikes project on iNaturalist. Simply sign up for an iNaturalist account, download the app on your smartphone, and request to join the project. You may use these labels when contributing to this project (printable on Avery template 18163 or 5163).
Official collision monitoring program
The official project consists of a team of volunteers who monitor routes in Harrisburg during spring and fall migratory periods to help save injured window-strike victims and collect deceased birds. All impacted birds encountered during monitoring are recorded in the official iNaturalist project. Injured birds are transported to West Shore Wildlife Center for care and rehabilitation. Deceased birds are collected for research with ultimate storage at the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia and, for select species, at Pennsylvania Game Commission.
We are in need of volunteers. If you are interested in either transporting injured birds to rehab, or serving as a monitor, please submit this form. Note that you will be asked to complete a volunteer agreement before engaging in volunteer activities. If you have any questions, please email birdsafeharrisburg@appalachianaudubon.org. Thanks in advance!
Banner Photo: Yellow-rumped Warbler, victim of a window collision. Photo taken by Anna Reichenbach