The cedar waxwing is a particularly striking bird, identified by black feathers across its eyes and the namesake waxy yellow tips on its tail feathers. They can usually be found in trees feeding on berries, but in October, students found them lying on the ground next to the Isenberg School of Management.
The cause of death for the eight cedar waxwings discovered next to the building was not disease or predators, but the building’s large glass windows.
“Reflections on Collisions,” a new exhibition at the John W. Olver Design Building, aims to bring awareness to the over one billion birds that die each year in the United States from window collisions.
The event was organized and curated by Rozy Bathrick, a PhD candidate in the organismic and evolutionary biology program.
“My goal is to make this issue visible,” Bathrick said. “I want people to understand how prevalent it is.”
The exhibition comes at a relevant time for the University of Massachusetts, as the school recently received a grant of $173,404 to make the buildings with the highest collision rates on campus safer for birds.
The buildings with the most recorded collisions are ones with many windows, such as the W.E.B. Du Bois Library, the Isenberg School of Management and the design building.
At the center of the exhibit lies over 40 bird specimens displayed in a glass case, demonstrating the ubiquity of window collisions are across species. Some of the bodies were found by Bird Safe UMass in the last three years, while others were killed by windows on campus as far back as 1967.
The species range from the common black-capped chickadee to the peregrine falcon, a species that nests on top of the library.
Awareness of bird-window collisions on campus began with Bird Safe UMass, an interdisciplinary group of volunteers dedicated to monitoring and preventing collisions. The organization has been collecting data since 2022, according to Nathan Senner, an associate professor in the department of environmental conservation and a member of Bird Safe UMass.
“We have had hundreds and hundreds of students participate in the surveys, and as of the end of Fall 2025, we have documented at least 218 bird-window collisions,” Senner said.
Bird Safe UMass provided information for the exhibition, along with the departments of environmental conservation, architecture and landscape architecture and regional planning (LARP).
The exhibit also has interactive elements, such as 3D models of birds that visitors can touch and hold. The models are replicas of the specimens Bird Safe UMass has collected. When the models are placed onto a device in the exhibit, an audio file will play where a member of Bird Safe UMass speaks about the bird.
As visitors cannot touch the actual dead birds due to the fragility of the specimen, the 3D model helps them understand the experience of holding a dead bird.
“The importance of the feeling of holding a bird in your hand … it’s a way to communicate their stories,” Bathrick said.
Native plants grown from seeds recovered from the stomach of collision victims are also on display at the exhibit.
Beyond calling attention to the problem, the exhibit features numerous solutions for preventing bird-window collisions in both new and old buildings.
Birds do not see glass as solid, and cannot tell the reflections of sky and vegetation in glass apart from reality. Colliding with glass causes physical trauma that is often deadly.
Some solutions address the glass directly, such as the use of frit glass, which incorporates small ceramic designs embedded into the glass during manufacturing to break up the reflection.
Window decals can also be applied to glass on completed buildings. This technique is demonstrated at the Studio Arts Building, where a decal design featuring birds has been applied to the front-entrance windows. No collisions have been recorded there since its installation.
Changes to the environment can also decrease collisions, such as turning off lights during nighttime migrations and planting trees at least 30 feet away from untreated windows.
“I think this is one of those rare environmental problems that has a very easy solution,” Sophie Bonazoli, a senior natural resources conservation major and a Bird Safe volunteer, said. “It’s really rare that we get an opportunity to help wildlife in such a huge way.”
“Reflections on Collisions” will be displayed in the Olver Design Building Gallery until May 1. The exhibit is open from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Friday.
Sidney Golbitz can be reached at [email protected].
