Capercaillie crashes through window in Mikkeli, causing damage and prompting safety concerns

On Friday night, Arja Grek from Mikkeli was in her kitchen cleaning lingonberries when she heard a loud crash coming from the direction of her bedroom. Startled, Grek jumped up and ran to investigate. “I went to the hallway to see what had fallen, but there was nothing there. In the bedroom, I saw that the window was completely shattered,” she explained.

The multitude of glass shards prompted her first instinct to close the bedroom door to prevent her dog from walking on the debris. While trying to comprehend what could have caused the break, she rushed to the balcony to look outside. Her neighbors shouted for her to come down quickly with a camera. “My hands were shaking, and I was in a state of shock; the crash was terrifying,” she said.

Outside, they found a female capercaillie that had flown into Grek’s window at high speed, breaking its neck upon impact and dying instantly. A neighbor carried the bird into the woods, estimating it weighed 2-3 kilograms.

The building’s maintenance worker took photos of the bird and the shattered window as evidence for the insurance company. After taping the window to prevent further glass shards from falling, Grek noticed that the inner pane remained intact. The impact ruptured two layers of glass before the bird’s momentum came to a stop.

Heikki Helle, a Birdlife expert, explained how the bird mistook the window for a gap between trees, leading to the collision. Hundreds of thousands of birds die in such accidents yearly, a problem that is drawing more attention. Helle noted that UV tape, which is invisible to humans but visible to birds, may soon hit the market to help mitigate these incidents. Grek expressed her sadness that the life of such a beautiful bird ended at her window.