McCormick Place installs bird-safe windows after nearly 1,000 died in single night last year

CHICAGO - One of Chicago's landmark buildings is sporting a new look just in time for bird migration season.

After an especially deadly bird strike last year, officials at Chicago's biggest convention complex have covered thousands of square feet of windows with film designed to keep birds away.

What makes the oldest and easternmost building of the McCormick Place Convention Center Complex so beautiful is also what makes it so deadly for birds.

"We've been working on it for decades. We're the most studied building in the world on bird strikes," said Cynthia McCafferty, a McCormick Place spokesperson.

Lakeside Center is wrapped in glass and overlooks Lake Michigan. When migrating birds travel along the lakefront in the spring and fall, they have been striking the building since it was built in the 1960s.

But after nearly 1,000 birds died in a single night last October, work crews installed a special protective window film with tiny white dots two inches apart. 

"Basically making the glass visible," said Brian Smith of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. "It breaks up the reflection that birds often see as habitat or something they can fly through. They don't see it as a solid surface."

Because of the building's massive size and all that glass, the $1.2 million project is the biggest bird strike mitigation effort in the world.

"So if you think about two football fields, that's the glass we have here at Lakeside Center, so it's a lot of glass, a lot of space to cover," said McCafferty.

The film is designed to make the dots less visible from inside the building looking out, and more visible from outside looking in.

McCormick Place is also continuing other practices to reduce bird strikes, including blocking windows with shades and turning off the lights at night.

"This is important just because of the magnitude of the problem," said Smith. "We know that up to a billion birds die a year [in the U.S.]  from collisions with glass and attraction to light. But we also know that the amount of glass on the landscape is increasing."

The film has only been on the windows for a few weeks, and the city is still fairly early in the migration season.

However, McCormick Place officials said so far, the results are encouraging. 

"Earlier this morning at our board meeting, we had someone from the Chicago Bird Collision Monitor Project, and she referenced that they've seen hundreds of birds in downtown Chicago, and we've only seen one or two here," said McCafferty. "So, we're very happy about that."