Millions of birds die in collisions each year, but lights could change that

September 26, 2018, Purdue University

Millions of birds die each year in collisions with planes, and airports have used everything from fireworks to herding dogs to scare them away. Some methods have been relatively successful, but they're useless after the plane takes off. Researchers at Purdue University may have just found a solution.

Red and blue LED lights lead some birds in the opposite direction, according to a study published Wednesday in the journal PeerJ.

Lights have been used to try to create "avoidance behavior" in birds before, but literature to support what kinds of light might work was nearly nonexistent. In collaboration with the USDA Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, the Purdue researchers are starting to uncover some answers.red

"The way we figure this out is to give the animal a choice," said Esteban Fernandez-Juricic, a professor of biological sciences at Purdue who led the study at the Ross Biological Reserve.

Here's how it works: Researchers release a bird (in this case, a brown-headed cowbird) and it flies away from them. A few inches away, the flight path is divided—one side has a light on and the other doesn't. A single-choice test, in which the bird chooses between a light on and off rather than between two colors, is ideal for measuring avoidance behavior, said Fernandez-Juricic. If the bird goes to the side without a light, that light might be a good candidate for warning birds of danger.

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Sonic net could save birds and aircraft, study suggests

Date: May 6, 2016

Source: University of Exeter

Introducing a noise net around airfields that emits sound levels equivalent to those of a conversation in a busy restaurant could prevent collisions between birds and aircraft, saving passenger lives and billions in damages, new research has found.

A study published in Ecological Applications led by Professor John Swaddle, visiting Research Associate at the University of Exeter, found that filling a controlled area with acoustic noise around an airfield, where the majority of collisions tend to take place, can reduce the number of birds in the area by 80 per cent.

Bird strikes cost the aviation industry worldwide billions of pounds annually, $937 million in the US alone, and were responsible for 255 deaths between 1988 and 2013, yet measures to reduce these have been largely ineffective. Collisions also pose a threat to resident and migratory birds as they often find the habitat around airports such as wetlands and open fields attractive.

Techniques to deter birds from airports include shooting, poisoning, live-capture and relocation, and the use of scare technologies, but these have proved largely ineffective. Professor Swaddle and his team believe they have found a benign and relatively cost effective solution to the problem by emitting 24- hour noise in the area to interrupt bird communication.

The researchers set up speakers and amplifiers in three areas of an airfield in Virginia USA and observed bird abundance over eight weeks, the first four weeks without noise and the second four weeks with the noise turned on.

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Lights tuned to birds' eyes may help reduce bird-aircraft collisions

Date:

April 9, 2015

Source:

Central Ornithology Publication Office

Summary:

A new study may have important implications for reducing bird-aircraft collisions through the customization of aircraft and runway lights to birds' visual systems. Birds' eyes are different from human eyes in several key ways, and researchers determined that blue light would be most conspicuous to the Brown-headed Cowbirds used in their study. Outfitting a remote-controlled model airplane with lights in this color, they tested how the captive flock reacted to continuous versus pulsing lights and to a stationary versus approaching aircraft. When the aircraft was stationary, cowbirds became alert more quickly when the lights were on than when they were off. When the aircraft approached the birds with lights off, their response times slowed as the aircraft's speed increased, but lights helped mitigate this effect.

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Researching Stop Signs in the Skies for Birds

By LISA W. FODERAROMAY 13, 2014

Advisory: No birds were harmed in the reporting of this article.

The tiny yellow-rumped warbler, having been weighed, measured and banded, was ready for its big test.

William Haffey, an ecology graduate student at Fordham University, cradled the nervous clump of gray and yellow feathers in his hands and carefully released it into a long, dark tunnel. At the far end were the adjacent glass panels, illuminated by a daylight simulator.

One panel was familiar transparent glass, which contributes to the demise of hundreds of millions of birds who fly into it each year in the United States. The other was bird-friendly glass, featuring white vertical stripes that are supposed to serve as a kind of avian stop sign.

“I’m hoping it flies,” Mr. Haffey said. (The previous test subject, a white-throated sparrow, had simply hopped around inside the tunnel, looking confused.)

But the yellow-rumped warbler, affectionately called a “butter butt” by birders, flew straight through the tunnel and decisively avoided the bird-safe glass, the desired result. Mr. Haffey raised his hand in a high-five.

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Plain Talk: Let's do a little to save a lot of birds

March 14, 2014 6:45 am • DAVE ZWEIFEL | The Capital Times editor emeritus | 

Editor Emeritus Dave Zweifel has been with The Capital Times since he graduated from UW-Madison in 1962, serving as the paper's editor in chief from 1983 to 2008. He was president of the Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council for 15 years, served as a Pulitzer Prize judge in 2000 and 2001, and named to the Wisconsin Newspaper Hall of Fame in 2011. A native of New Glarus, Wis., where he grew up on a farm, he serves on several non-profit boards and is a military veteran, having served on active duty as a field artillery officer in the early 1960s and for 26 years in the Wisconsin Army National Guard where he retired as a colonel in 1993.

Ever so often in the summertime I'll hear a sickening thump at my second-story office window that signals once again the sad news that a bird mistook it for an opening.

Sometimes the bird falls to the ground below, stunned a bit, but survives, but more often they hit the window with such force that it's doomsday.

This isn't uncommon, I've learned. A recent study conducted by fellows at the Smithsonian Institution and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has concluded that between 365 million and 988 million birds are likely killed in the United States each year as a result of collisions with buildings.

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Precedent-Setting Verdict Should Reduce Bird Collision Deaths In Canada

Tuesday, February 19, 2013

A significant legal precedent was set last week in Canada that could have ripple effects worldwide. A Canadian judge has recognized in a ruling the need for building owners to take action to reduce migratory bird deaths from lethal collisions with the highly reflective windows of office buildings.

“This is a significant development in an increasingly serious issue that is gaining more attention worldwide – the impact of man-made structures on wildlife, especially birds, and the need to modify existing buildings, as well as incorporating bird-friendly design into new construction,” said Dr. Christine Sheppard, Bird Collisions Campaign Manager for American Bird Conservancy, one of the leading U.S. bird conservation organizations and the only one in the U.S. with a national bird collisions program.

Cadillac Fairview, one of Canada’s largest commercial property owners and managers, was charged with violating the Environmental Protection Act (EPA) and the federal Species at Risk Act (SARA). In a ruling, Judge Melvyn Green of the Ontario Court of Justice found that hundreds of birds, including threatened species, had been injured and killed at the company’s Yonge Corporate Centre, consisting of three office buildings in Toronto, during the 2010 spring and fall migrations. Judge Green ruled that both the EPA and SARA are properly interpreted to prohibit the emission (intentional or unintentional) of reflected light where that reflection causes the death or injury of birds.

While the Toronto court acquitted Cadillac Fairview and related companies of the charges, that verdict was handed down only as a consequence to the corporate steps being taken to address the problem. The company began investigating window films as a solution after Ecojustice and Ontario Nature laid similar charges against a different building owner, and subsequently installed window films on the most lethal side of their complex at a cost of over $100,000. The company also committed to retrofitting the remainder of the complex.

Continued:  http://www.chattanoogan.com/2013/2/19/244728/Precedent-Setting-Verdict-Should-Reduce.aspx#