Highways officials plan to modify the glass pane design of noise barriers on a Yuen Long road after at least 50 birds hit the barriers and died over the past three years.
The officials are working with conservation officers to devise a better design to frighten birds away from the barriers. Design and installation could be completed in a few months.
One option is to replace the black hawk silhouette stuck onto the glass panes since late last year with stickers of opaque stripes or colourful circles to minimise the transparent-glass surface.
The birds, mostly smaller species and some rarely sighted, have been found lying dead or semi-conscious at the bottom of the barrier, which was built along Shap Pat Heung Road in 2006 to cope with increasing traffic brought by property development in the area.
They had apparently collided with the three- to six-metre-tall transparent glass barriers, which stretch intermittently along the road for a few hundred metres to shield villages from traffic noise. In some sections, there are trees immediately behind the barriers.
Fifty-three birds from 25 species have fallen prey to the barriers so far, leaving 50 dead and three injured. The last collision happened about a week ago.
