This morning, a dead Tufted Titmouse achieved some grim and arbitrary notoriety as the 250th window-killed bird I’ve found at the Noble Research Center since monitoring began on 20 August 2009. She’s right near the entrance to the northwest alcove, and I left her in place to see how long it takes for her to be removed.
Like so many birds I find in June, this was a female (AHY) with a brood patch. This one had a faint stripe of mulberry juice down the front of her breast and little on her beak.
Intrigued by the pattern, I queried my database for June casualties, 2009–2016. Out of 22 window-kills, at least 8 have been females with brood patches (and additional 7 might have been but the data weren’t recorded).
Bird-Window Collisions at OK State 