Help protect our feathered friends
Windows may kill more birds each year than cats do. Home windows can be a bigger problem for birds than skyscrapers. Many such bird deaths are preventable.
Feeder location is a key factor.
Remember the "rule of 3 or 30." Move feeders and birdbaths more than 30 feet away from or within three feet of windows. Distance gives birds time to avoid a window and proximity prevents them from building enough momentum to kill themselves. Feeders attached to windows are a great idea.
Make windows look less like the outdoors by breaking up the expanse of glass. Decals can be effective if you attach enough of them to break the glass into small sections. Placing mesh netting across the outside of frequently hit windows is 100 percent effective – if birds hit the netting, they just bounce off.
Other ways to break up a window’s reflectivity are to suspend a large branch in front of the window, spray on fake snow drifts or hang Mylar strips, shiny pie plates or CDs that move in the breeze across the window.
Charlotte Leight
Lithopolis
Treacherous curve needs to be corrected
Residents of Noe-Bixby Road in Madison Township are fed up with being ignored and with the stall tactics of the Franklin County Engineer’s office.
The southwest portion of a curve on Noe-Bixby Road at Stratford Lane has been plagued with hundreds of accidents causing thousands of dollars in property damage, death, and injuries for years. The road was redesigned by the county around 1970 and the first bad accident happened within the first week after the redesign and vehicles have been leaving the roadway ever since.
Complaints by residents to the county have been ignored for 38 years. The Madison Township administrator has also contacted the county and a public meeting was supposed to have been held in December, but was cancelled by the county.
Since the meeting’s cancellation there have been five accidents on the curve with property damage. Four mailboxes and a tree have been damaged in this period, three of the mailboxes were mine with one destroyed less than 12 hours after replacement.
The old curve never had any accidents. The redesigned curve is defective in its design and needs immediate correction. The county engineer should immediately install temporary concrete safety barriers to protect the residents and drivers on this curve until a permanent solution has been done.
Thomas Rinehart
Madison Township
