Click here to download a PDF of the Acopian BirdSavers Fact Sheet.
The first Acopian BirdSavers were made in the mid-1980s. Being a family of engineers and naturalists, we were upset when we realized that the windows of our home were killing birds as they flew into them, and we decided to try to figure out a way to stop the killing. The first Acopian BirdSavers were made from those “stylish hanging curtain beads” that were fashionable years ago. We took the individual bead strings apart and rehung them about every 4 inches in front of the offending windows. We had remarkable success on the first try. It worked! But our rooms faintly resembled those of a hippie pad with those beads hanging on the outside of the windows. But it was better than killing birds. And for some reason, the birds that previously were hitting the windows seemed always to be “rare” birds – species that we hardly ever saw. It was exciting to see them, but not exciting to see them dead.
Our “beaded” BirdSavers lasted many years. As far as we knew, we had zero bird kills on the windows with these first-generation BirdSavers. The beads eventually began to deteriorate, and we couldn’t find more to replace them (this was before the internet). Our second-generation BirdSavers used very thin bamboo poles. These also worked, but they didn’t look as nice as the “beaded” ones.
Eventually we started experimenting with parachute cord. It turns out that this worked beautifully to stop birds from hitting the windows, and as an added bonus, looked good. The current design is easy to hang and can be easily removed, although as far as we know, no one who has put up Acopian BirdSavers has taken them down. People actually like the way they look and think they look cool!
