Door Creek Park’s pavilion just got a great update this week! Thanks to Ellie Meng of Girl Scout Troop #7889, in collaboration with Madison Parks Division and Southern Wisconsin Bird Alliance, a window treatment has been installed on the building to prevent birds from colliding with glass.
“I found it heartbreaking to see how problematic the windows at Door Creek Park were for the birds. I am overjoyed to see that they are being fixed in time to have a safer fall migration,” says Meng.
Meng first connected with Brenna Marsicek, Southern Wisconsin Bird Alliance’s director of outreach and coordinator for the Bird Collision Corps (BCC) program, in April 2025. As part of her Girl Scout Gold Award Project, Meng has been monitoring sites with Bird Collision Corps and encouraging plans for window treatments. She was directly involved in collaborating with the Dane County Humane Society’s team to help install treatments beginning in summer 2025.
“Bird-window collisions kill over a billion birds every year in the United States, making it a huge conservation issue,” says Marsicek. “BCC volunteers and site partners are being proactive in changing that statistic. It’s incredibly inspiring and validating to see the results of thousands of hours of surveying come to fruition here at Door Creek Park and throughout the Madison area.”
Bird Collision Corps is a Madison-based, volunteer-supported community science program that began in 2018 to study the factors that lead to bird deaths caused by window strikes. The data gathered by the program has influenced bird-safe glass ordinances in both Madison and Middleton. It has also led to numerous window treatments being installed locally at Madison College, University of Wisconsin–Madison, American Family Insurance, Verona Public Library, Holy Wisdom Monastery, as well as the Henry Vilas Zoo—where an additional treatment will be installed later this month.
Door Creek Park’s pavilion opened in summer 2025 and features floor-to-ceiling windows on the north and south side of the building. It was added as a site for BCC monitoring for the first time in spring 2026. BCC volunteers found a disproportionately high number of collisions, likely because of the arrangement of windows and the excellent bird habitat nearby. Upon learning about this conflict, the Madison Parks Division was eager to take action.
“We are grateful for the work of BCC volunteers and the support from Ellie and SoWBA to help make our buildings more bird-friendly,” says Hannah Quinlan, Conservation Resource Supervisor for the City of Madison Parks Division. “This is an important complement to our efforts to improve bird habitat at Door Creek and other parks. We look forward to more projects in the future.”
The window treatment selected, made by Feather Friendly, has been shown to reduce collisions by 95% in most cases. To support the installation, the company donated a portion of the cost of the treatment; then Meng and her troop contributed $800 to cover half of the remaining amount, which was matched by Madison Parks. Southern Wisconsin Bird Alliance coordinated the installation process, completed this week.
The Door Creek Park shelter will be monitored this fall to assess the effectiveness of the window treatment. The next season of Bird Collision Corps will run from September 1 through October 31. For more information about the project or to join as a volunteer, visit swibirds.org/bcc.
Written by Kaitlin Svabek, communications director, with Brenna Marsicek, director of outreach
