A special type of glass coating, developed by a German company and inspired by spider webs, is being used for the first time in the UK to help protect birds flocking to an island off the northeast coast of England.
The glazing, which is known as Ornilux and is visible to birds but invisible to humans, was developed by researchers at Arnold Glas and is being used at a lookout tower at The Holy Island of Lindisfarne in order to keep the “hundreds of species” of birds that flock there at specific times of the year, BBC News reported on Friday.
Previously, the substance, which can reportedly reduce bird collisions by as much as two-thirds, has been used by a Canadian wildlife center, a German zoo, an Austrian railway building, and a U.S. school. However, Lindisfarne is the first UK facility to make use of the UV coating that was first introduced to Europe in 2006.
“A friend of the owner of the company saw an article about the Orb-weaver spider,” Arnold Glas export manager Natalie Kopp told the BBC. “Its web reflects UV light protecting it from being destroyed by birds as they can see it and do not fly through. The idea of developing a coating for glass… inspired by nature was born on the same evening.”
According to the company’s official website, bird window strikes is one of the greatest threats to avian mortality (second only to habitat destruction), largely because of the “reflective and transparent characteristics of glass.” In order to prevent those collisions, the company’s bird-protection glass has a patterned, UV-reflective coating that makes it appear transparent to people, but observable to birds.
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Continued: http://www.redorbit.com/news/science/1112674203/spider-web-glass-birds-081312/
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