Safe Skies Maryland’s mission is to deal with human-caused factors of the loss of biodiversity and population decline of birds. One of the organization’s primary goals is to deal with the fact that over a billion birds die every year in window collisions. The Howard County Conservancy is a non-profit land trust that operates a nature center in Woodstock, Maryland. The Gudelsky Environmental Center has several large windows overlooking a lawn where there are many trees and bird feeders. Safe Skies Maryland is part of the Maryland Ornithological Society.

In March 2018, Safe Skies partnered with the Conservancy to install Accopian Bird Savers (paracords) on one lower level window to discourage birds from flying into the glass. To complement this initial bird strike project, these two organizations turned to the HCBC for financial support to install different types of bird saver options. The bird club agreed in January, 2019, to use funds from the Marty Chestem bequest to pay for custom and standard film applications on the remaining windows plus signage to explain the purpose of the project and recognize Marty Chestem, who had been a founding member of the bird club.

The project slowly evolved over time with great care shown in the execution of the custom design. It was drawn by Daria Parsa who received her Bachelor of Arts in Studio Art and Art History from the University of Maryland, College Park. She is based in Laurel. Once the design was approved, then it and the standard panels of either dots or lines were printed. Final installation took place during the fall of 2020. Completing this project during the middle of a pandemic meant that only a limited number of people, usually four or fewer, could work on the windows at any one time.