The Verona Library put stickers on its towering windows. It’s for the birds.

On Friday, the Verona Public Library near Madison debuted floor-to-ceiling translucent dot stickers on its 35-foot tall glass windows. 

The treatment comes after volunteer citizen scientists with Southern Wisconsin Bird Alliance, formerly known as Madison Audubon, documented 88 bird deaths while periodically surveying the windows since 2021. 

The number is likely much higher, said Brenna Marsicek, the organization’s director of outreach. 

“It’s likely close to twice, up to four times the numbers that our volunteers document,” Marsicek said. “Birds hit windows at a breathtaking rate.”

Window strikes are a leading threat to bird populations. According to a widely cited 2014 study, between 365 million and 988 million birds in the U.S. die in building collisions each year.

In 2019, a nearly 50-year study of birds in North America found that populations have shrunk across species. And a recent 2025 “U.S. State of the Birds” report said the losses are continuing. 

Marsicek’s volunteers want to help. Her “Bird Collision Corps” team identifies high-risk windows at a dozen sites in and around Madison by surveying for six weeks during both spring and fall bird migration season. 

“These volunteers are out early in the morning in all types of weather, looking for dead birds,” Marsicek said. “It takes a special person to want to do that.”

The library’s iconic windows and proximity to prairie habitat made it particularly high risk, with one of the highest recorded bird deaths across all their sites, she said. 

“We presented the data to the library, and they said that they needed to do something about this,” Marsicek said. 

Former Bird Collision Corps volunteer Kate Dike recalled looking for and documenting window strikes at the library.

“It’s been hard every single time, finding a dead bird,” Dike said. 

She began volunteering after seeing birds hit her windows at home and helping out at her local humane society.

“I started feeling very close to birds,” Dike said. “And I thought, if there’s something that we can do to prevent all these bird deaths, yeah, I’m all for it.”

She was glad the program worked as intended, and her data collection helped the library flag the windows.

“Getting the data from the Bird Collision Corps really helped us see that we could make a big difference,” Verona Public Library Director Stacey Burkart said.

She said bird strikes were not a new problem at the library. 

“Over the years … staff has had to come out and pick up birds,” Burkart said.

Burkart said she’s eager to have Collision Corps volunteers return during fall migration, to see how the stickers are working. 

“We did the most important part first,” Burkart said.

She said the massive windows are the library’s “centerpiece,” and was glad to see the new window treatment was discreet. 

“We did have concerns with the view, because it’s obviously something the staff and the public really love about this building,” Burkart said. “But actually, it’s so subtle that you don’t really even see it. It’s fantastic.”

Ultimately, the goal is to educate people about the risk of bird window collisions, and give them easy solutions to help, Marsicek said. 

In 2020, with the organization’s support, Madison passed a “Bird-safe Glass” city ordinance, stating all new buildings over 10,000 square feet in the city need to have bird-safe windows. Marsicek hopes other municipalities will follow. 

“And of course, people can do something similar at their own homes by putting up dots on their windows or hanging paracord curtains, or using insect screens,” she said.