On Oct. 2, 2025, a swamp sparrow smacked into a glass door at the Independence Visitor Center and fell dead onto the entryway’s pavement. A volunteer window collision monitor with Bird Safe Philly found the bird and documented its demise. Volunteers found four dead or stunned birds that morning, with an additional 13 logged by iNaturalist users across the city. Numbers like these, though sad and avoidable, stand in sharp contrast to those from the same date in 2020, when monitor Stephen Maciejewski found more than 400 dead birds around a few high-rises in Center City, indicating that many more were killed throughout the city. The response to that fatal night kicked off a movement, though efforts to protect more birds in Philadelphia have run into a barrier at City Hall.
In the past five years, Bird Safe Philly, an alliance of Valley Forge Audubon, Liberty Bird Alliance (formerly Wyncote Audubon), the Delaware Valley Ornithological Club, the Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University and Audubon Mid-Atlantic, has expanded the effort to document birds killed and injured by windows. During the spring and fall migration seasons, when tens of millions of birds fly the skies over Philadelphia, volunteer monitors patrol the sidewalks in front of dangerous buildings, while others stand ready to whisk injured birds to the Schuylkill Center for Environmental Education’s wildlife clinic.
At night, artificial lights confuse migrating birds, many of which fly after dark and evolved to navigate by the light of the stars and moon. The mass mortality event of 2020 occurred on a rainy evening with a low cloud ceiling — conditions particularly apt to confuse birds. Bird Safe Philly’s Lights Out Philly initiative continues to encourage building owners, tenants and residents to turn off their lights at night during the spring and fall, and has helped inspire similar efforts in other cities, including Harrisburg, says Bird Safe Philly coordinator Leigh Altadonna.
New York City has the best ordinance on window glass. But it’s very hard to get something like that going with City Council in Philadelphia.”
— Leigh Altadonna, Bird Safe Philly
Altadonna and Bird Safe Philly’s Stephanie Egger pointed to successes in getting some problem buildings, such as Sister Cities Cafe in Center City, to retrofit windows to make them visible to birds, using a window film produced by Feather Friendly that’s embedded with patterns of dots. Bird Safe Philly has also worked with local environmental centers to do the same, including at the Wissahickon Environmental Center (also known as the Tree House) on Oct. 9. Environmental centers are often bird death traps, with windows reflecting the natural landscapes around them. When their windows protect birds, they can serve as a showcase to visitors, Egger says.
But those bird-safe windows are a drop in the bucket. “It’s super frustrating,” Egger says. “We’ve been doing this for five years and we have a handful of buildings protected with Feather Friendly.” The National Park Service has been slow to fix lethal windows of buildings on Independence Mall. The Ciocca Subaru dealership in South Philadelphia has so far ignored calls to retrofit its windows. “Comcast is a partner in Lights Out but is still killing a good number of birds each migration, and talking to them about glass seems to be a complete nonstarter,” she says. In the meantime, buildings keep going up with bird-lethal windows. “There’s so much development going on, we can’t keep up.”
What’s needed is action from the City, Altadonna says. “New York City has the best ordinance on window glass. But it’s very hard to get something like that going with City Council in Philadelphia.”
New York City passed a law in 2020 requiring new buildings and renovations to use patterned glass. Grid reached out to the chair of Philadelphia City Council’s Environment Committee, Jamie Gauthier, to ask if she would support similar legislation in Philadelphia. A spokesperson responded by email, “Councilmember Gauthier is a strong advocate for sustainable building practices and bird safety is a part of that.”
This special section is a part of Every Voice, Every Vote, a collaborative project managed by The Lenfest Institute for Journalism. The William Penn Foundation provides lead support for Every Voice, Every Vote in 2024 and 2025 with additional funding from The Lenfest Institute for Journalism, Comcast NBC Universal, The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, Henry L. Kimelman Family Foundation, Judy and Peter Leone, Arctos Foundation, Wyncote Foundation, 25th Century Foundation, Dolfinger-McMahon Foundation, and Philadelphia Health Partnership. To learn more about the project and view a full list of supporters, visit 
A couple of ideas: (1) I wonder if public pressure on places like Comcast and the Subaru dealership would be effective. Maybe an online petition that people could sign to be sent to companies? (2) Maybe they’re reluctant to do anything because they don’t know where to start, or don’t know how expensive it would be. If they’re given a way to get a free estimate for what needs to be done, with someone agreeing to meet them and explain everything, that might provide the motivation needed.
P.S. I volunteer at the Schuylkill Wildlife Center and it always warms my heart when a Bird Safe Philly volunteer delivers a stunned bird to us to assess and provide necessary care for.