Recent Retrofits: Birds Georgia installs Feather Friendly film at Camden County High School

Photos by Jill Helton.

This month, Birds Georgia is putting the finishing touches on our largest retrofit to date and our fourth on the Georgia coast. This brings us to just over 5,000 square feet retrofitted since 2022.

Visitors to the Camden County High School Fine Arts Building may notice lots and lots of dots on the building. These dots are special window treatments designed to prevent birds from flying into the glass. The project was made possible thanks to a partnership between Birds Georgia, Camden County High School, and the City of Kingsland through a grant from the Disney Conservation Fund.
 
The dots are a special dot-matrix by Feather Friendly® that reduces the transparency of the glass and breaks up reflection, preventing birds from flying into them. Feather Friendly® has been applied to approximately 2,200 square feet of the exterior windows. The pattern, with dots spaced two inches apart, breaks up the reflection and alerts birds that the space is not a clear flyway, causing them to stall and fly in a different, safer direction. Current research estimates that over 1 billion birds perish each year from colliding with buildings in the United States alone.

Since the Fine Arts Building opened in 2020, bird collisions have been a regular occurrence. The west façade, which faces a beautiful wetland habitat in the middle of the campus, is a deadly combination of highly reflective glass and trees. School administrators sought solutions and contacted Birds Georgia for assistance. 

The purchase of material from Feather Friendly® was funded by a generous grant from the Disney Conservation Fund. Material and shipping worked out to about ~$3.89/sq ft for this project.

Birds Georgia, with the help of  volunteers from Camden County Audubon, as well as students and staff of Camden County High School, applied the film over the course of three volunteer workdays in early 2025. 

A million thanks to our volunteers who assisted with the installations:
Dr. Grayson Day, Jeff Potocsnak, , Jill Helton, Amy Burns & Josie Landers, Dan & Priscilla Krupp, Amanda Carroll, Mike, Brahm & Noah Bessette, Jaxon McQuaig, Loree Sherck, Cannon Nethercott, Elissa Owens, Erin Singleton, and Alexis & Izzy Stewart.

Additionally, Birds Georgia provided 375 square feet of Feather Friendly® Large Scale Pro Solution to retrofit portions of the University of Georgia Marine Extension and Georgia Sea Grant office in Brunswick, Georgia. This building, while already partially retrofitted with CollidEscape solutions, had a few untreated windows where collisions would occasionally occur. The purchase of material from Feather Friendly® was funded by a grant from the Disney Conservation Fund. Material and shipping worked out to about ~$4 per square foot. 

The University of Georgia Marine Extension and Georgia Sea Grant office in Brunswick, Georgia houses our coastal specimen collection for Project Safe Flight and has been a valuable partner for many years. We’re happy to report that all glass around the building will now be treated with a bird-friendly film and will reduce or eliminate collisions for years to come!

Retrofits along the Georgia Coast: 

1. Camp Jekyll 4-H Center: 1,342 square feet, completed 2022
2. Burton 4-H Center on Tybee Island: 1,050 square feet of buildings (and buses!), completed 2024
3. Camden County High School: 2,250 square feet, completed 2025
4. University of Georgia Marine Extension and GA Sea Grant office: 375 square feet, completed 2025

For a total of 5,017 square feet covered! 

Other projects we’ve completed: 
Dunwoody Nature Center
Wild Nest Bird Rehabilitation Center
Sawnee Mountain Visitor Center
Southface Institute Atlanta
Amana Academy
Blue Heron Nature Preserve
Newman Wetlands Center
Chattahoochee Nature Center
Elachee Nature Science Center
Trees Atlanta/Birds Georgia office (Bird-friendly glass)
Kendeda Building, Georgia Tech Campus (Bird-friendly glass)

About Project Safe Flight
Project Safe Flight is a conservation effort to further understand the issue of bird/building collisions in the Atlanta metro area as well as Georgia’s coastal counties. The goal of this project is to determine what species are colliding with buildings, how many birds are affected, what parts of the state are problematic, and what can be done to make Georgia's cities more bird friendly.
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Volunteers with Birds Georgia’s Project Safe Flight patrol the streets during both spring and fall migration, looking for birds that have been killed or injured after colliding with buildings. More than 5,300 birds, representing 140 different species, have been collected since monitoring began in fall 2015. Ruby-throated Hummingbirds and Tennessee Warblers are the top 2 collected species across the metro-Atlanta area; Common Yellowthroat is the top species in the coastal counties.

UGA Installation. Photos by Bryan Fluech.

Camden County High School Installation. Photos by Jill Helton.