Birds vs. building: It didn’t end well.

395 migratory fowl die after slamming into Texas high-rise

At 7:20 a.m. May 4, Josh Henderson was summoned to a mass casualty event at a 23-story building in downtown Galveston, Texas.

He arrived to a scene unlike any he had ever witnessed.

Henderson, supervisor of the animal services unit in the Galveston Police Department, began collecting the bodies — dozens upon dozens of migratory birds that had evidently become disoriented and slammed into the high-rise while flying north from Central and South America during a storm the night before.

Three of the birds were alive. But 395 were not so lucky.

Henderson knows the number because he counted the animals by hand, sorted them into a rainbow-hued array on an autopsy table, and then packaged them for delivery to researchers.

Henderson’s body count began like this: 90 Nashville warblers, 60 Blackburnian warblers, 42 chestnut-sided warblers, 41 ovenbirds, 29 yellow warblers. And on it went, all the way down to “1 cerulean warbler.”

In a statement, Henderson sounded a bit stunned by the mass casualties. Birds fly into buildings fairly regularly, he conceded. But “the numbers are nothing I am familiar with throughout my career in animal services,” he said. “This is the largest event like this I have ever been a part of in over 10 years.”

Bird advocacy groups said the incident, which may have been exacerbated by strong storm winds that propelled some of the animals into the structure.

As many as 1 billion birds die in collisions with glass in the United States each year, according to American Bird Conservancy.

Wildlife advocates also argue that new buildings should be constructed with “bird friendliness” in mind, which can involve using patterned, frosted or other nonreflective glass, as well as incorporating architectural features such as awnings.