SINGAPORE: A hotline dedicated to receiving reports of dead birds recorded its highest number of cases last year, with building collisions – particularly window strikes – emerging as the leading cause.
Run by Singapore’s only natural history museum, the hotline logged about 650 reports in 2025 – more than five times the number recorded in 2020, when recordkeeping began.
This rise is largely due to greater public awareness of the reporting channel, but more needs to be done to prevent such incidents, said Dr Tan Yen Yi, assistant senior curator of birds at the Lee Kong Chian Natural History Museum.
Many of the birds are believed to have crashed into buildings, leaving them dazed, injured or bleeding from the nostrils. In severe cases, they die from such incidents.
“Windows … are often transparent and then also reflective - both are very bad (for birds) because they don't get the illusion of continuity in the habitat. And then birds attempt to fly through the windows, so that's how they crash into them,” noted Dr Tan, who currently mans the hotline.
The museum documents these deaths for scientific research and tracks the environmental conditions the birds live in.
The hotline has also begun collecting additional data, such as the direction of impact, to better understand collision patterns.
It has revealed changes in species trends as well. For example, while no cases of black-beaked dwarf kingfishers – a migratory species – were recorded in 2024, 10 cases were reported in 2025.
“That’s a sign that the species is still alive, but it’s also sad to see that they are still crashing into our buildings and structures,” Dr Tan told CNA.
Singapore sees an influx of migratory bird movement from September to late December, as they escape winter in the northern hemisphere. Dr Tan said these are the peak months for cases involving migratory birds.
The blue-winged pitta remains the top migratory collider reported to the hotline.
However, native birds die from building collisions throughout the year despite the common belief that they have adapted to Singapore’s urban landscape, she added.
Just a week into 2026, the hotline has received reports of species including the peregrine falcon, which have been spotted locally since 2017.
More notably, it was also the first of its subspecies in 86 years, with the last specimen collected in 1940.
A composite image of a peregrine falcon found dead on Jan 3, 2026, and the body of a blue-winged pitta collected on Oct 27, 2025. (Photos: Tan Yen Yi/Lee Kong Chian Natural History Museum)
Dr Tan said simple measures can help reduce such incidents.
One easy step, she noted, is drawing curtains so that windows appear opaque rather than transparent or reflective, especially in the evenings.
“Artificial light is very disorientating for nighttime migrating birds … and be careful when you’re driving, especially at very dimly lit roads because that’s where I always get the reports,” she added.
An imprint of a bird that flew into a window in a Singapore home. (Photo: Lee Kong Chian Natural History Musuem)
Dr Tan pointed out that birds that fly late at night, like oriental scops owls, often get hit by cars or fly into people’s homes where they can get injured.
Migratory birds also tend to fly at night to avoid diurnal predators and expend less energy compared to daytime, she said.
She added that Singapore’s urban landscape could be made more bird-friendly with greater effort from building designers and occupants.
Architects say awareness of the importance of environmentally friendly building design is growing.
“Today's architecture design is focused a lot on biophilic design, which includes a lot of greenery landscaping. It's also a way of creating wellness as an environment for us humans to live in”, said Mr Melvin Tan, immediate past president of the Singapore Institute of Architects.
“Ironically, it also attracts the birds … and the fauna along with it. So, how we design is always to ensure that the elements that potentially will create a problem for the birds are dealt with.”
He added that while design solutions exist, cost often remains a challenge.
“With the strategies, there are a few - one of them is to provide glass that is visible to the spectrum of UV (ultraviolet light) that the birds can see,” said Mr Melvin Tan, immediate past president of the Singapore Institute of Architects.
“We humans can still see through it. It's still translucent, just like regular glass, but the birds can sense it and therefore avoid it,” he added.
However, Mr Tan – who is joint managing director of LAUD Architects – noted that bird-safe glass could cost about 15 per cent more than ordinary glass.
Another option, he suggested, is to install decals to make glass surfaces more visible to birds.
Such an approach is already being tried at Nanyang Technological University.
Students have raised S$60,000 in funds to install decals at a known bird-collision hotspot on campus – the building that houses the School of Art, Design and Media – by September.
The ground-up initiative, called Project Avigate, achieved double of its fundraising target. The university will be matching the funds raised.
The initiative hopes to cover about 600sqm, or a quarter of the building’s reflective windows, with the money raised.
Project Avigate co-founder Tang Kean Seng said he hopes the initiative can eventually scale beyond campus, sparking wider change across Singapore.
“The short-term plan right now is that we will install (the decals) first, and we'll continue to monitor how effective the solutions are, because we're aware that some of these solutions (have been) proposed in other climates, other countries, other geographies,” he added.
“Although the confidence rate is very high, we want to be very safe, that these measures are indeed workable and applicable in our local context.”
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Run by Singapore’s only natural history museum, the hotline logged about 650 reports in 2025 – more than five times the number recorded in 2020, when recordkeeping began.
This rise is largely due to greater public awareness of the reporting channel, but more needs to be done to prevent such incidents, said Dr Tan Yen Yi, assistant senior curator of birds at the Lee Kong Chian Natural History Museum.
Many of the birds are believed to have crashed into buildings, leaving them dazed, injured or bleeding from the nostrils. In severe cases, they die from such incidents.
“Windows … are often transparent and then also reflective - both are very bad (for birds) because they don't get the illusion of continuity in the habitat. And then birds attempt to fly through the windows, so that's how they crash into them,” noted Dr Tan, who currently mans the hotline.
The museum documents these deaths for scientific research and tracks the environmental conditions the birds live in.
CHANGES IN SPECIES TRENDS
The hotline has also begun collecting additional data, such as the direction of impact, to better understand collision patterns.
It has revealed changes in species trends as well. For example, while no cases of black-beaked dwarf kingfishers – a migratory species – were recorded in 2024, 10 cases were reported in 2025.
“That’s a sign that the species is still alive, but it’s also sad to see that they are still crashing into our buildings and structures,” Dr Tan told CNA.
Singapore sees an influx of migratory bird movement from September to late December, as they escape winter in the northern hemisphere. Dr Tan said these are the peak months for cases involving migratory birds.
The blue-winged pitta remains the top migratory collider reported to the hotline.
However, native birds die from building collisions throughout the year despite the common belief that they have adapted to Singapore’s urban landscape, she added.
Just a week into 2026, the hotline has received reports of species including the peregrine falcon, which have been spotted locally since 2017.
More notably, it was also the first of its subspecies in 86 years, with the last specimen collected in 1940.
A composite image of a peregrine falcon found dead on Jan 3, 2026, and the body of a blue-winged pitta collected on Oct 27, 2025. (Photos: Tan Yen Yi/Lee Kong Chian Natural History Museum)
HOW TO REDUCE CASES
Dr Tan said simple measures can help reduce such incidents.
One easy step, she noted, is drawing curtains so that windows appear opaque rather than transparent or reflective, especially in the evenings.
“Artificial light is very disorientating for nighttime migrating birds … and be careful when you’re driving, especially at very dimly lit roads because that’s where I always get the reports,” she added.
An imprint of a bird that flew into a window in a Singapore home. (Photo: Lee Kong Chian Natural History Musuem)
Dr Tan pointed out that birds that fly late at night, like oriental scops owls, often get hit by cars or fly into people’s homes where they can get injured.
Migratory birds also tend to fly at night to avoid diurnal predators and expend less energy compared to daytime, she said.
She added that Singapore’s urban landscape could be made more bird-friendly with greater effort from building designers and occupants.
BUILDING DESIGN
Architects say awareness of the importance of environmentally friendly building design is growing.
“Today's architecture design is focused a lot on biophilic design, which includes a lot of greenery landscaping. It's also a way of creating wellness as an environment for us humans to live in”, said Mr Melvin Tan, immediate past president of the Singapore Institute of Architects.
“Ironically, it also attracts the birds … and the fauna along with it. So, how we design is always to ensure that the elements that potentially will create a problem for the birds are dealt with.”
He added that while design solutions exist, cost often remains a challenge.
“With the strategies, there are a few - one of them is to provide glass that is visible to the spectrum of UV (ultraviolet light) that the birds can see,” said Mr Melvin Tan, immediate past president of the Singapore Institute of Architects.
“We humans can still see through it. It's still translucent, just like regular glass, but the birds can sense it and therefore avoid it,” he added.
However, Mr Tan – who is joint managing director of LAUD Architects – noted that bird-safe glass could cost about 15 per cent more than ordinary glass.
Another option, he suggested, is to install decals to make glass surfaces more visible to birds.
NTU INITIATIVE
Such an approach is already being tried at Nanyang Technological University.
Students have raised S$60,000 in funds to install decals at a known bird-collision hotspot on campus – the building that houses the School of Art, Design and Media – by September.
The ground-up initiative, called Project Avigate, achieved double of its fundraising target. The university will be matching the funds raised.
The initiative hopes to cover about 600sqm, or a quarter of the building’s reflective windows, with the money raised.
Project Avigate co-founder Tang Kean Seng said he hopes the initiative can eventually scale beyond campus, sparking wider change across Singapore.
“The short-term plan right now is that we will install (the decals) first, and we'll continue to monitor how effective the solutions are, because we're aware that some of these solutions (have been) proposed in other climates, other countries, other geographies,” he added.
“Although the confidence rate is very high, we want to be very safe, that these measures are indeed workable and applicable in our local context.”
Continue reading...