Drones could disturb Suffolk's rare birds, pilots warned

PUBLISHED: 21:38 01 April 2019 | UPDATED: 08:39 05 April 2019

Jake Foxford

Rare birds could be disturbed or even distressed by errant drone pilots trying to get photographs, it has been warned.

Suffolk has some very sensitive sites where rare bird breeds, both native and migratory, are either already nesting or will shortly be arriving.

Areas like RSPB Minsmere and the Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB) of the Suffolk Coast and Heaths are both sites of nests that should not be disturbed, as birds there are protected under law.

Some of these sites are protected from entry, so some users of drones may want to use technology to try to get a view from above.

Read on

Drones deployed to track Critically Endangered Australian parrot

06/12/2018

A new study has demonstrated how the use of robotics can become a key tool in the conservation of threatened species.

Swift Parrot is one of Australia's most threatened birds and is in need of urgent help, with BirdLife International estimating a total wild population of between 1,000 and 3,000 individuals. It breeds in Tasmania, migrating to south-east Australia for the austral winter, where it can be found sporadically from New South Wales west to Adelaide.

In 2010, Loro Parque Fundación started funding crucial field research by scientists of the Fenner School of Environment and Society, Australian National University (ANU), triggered by the accelerating decline of the wild population, which has been classified as Critically Endangered since 2015.

What they discovered was alarming. They found that Swift Parrots prefer to nest in cavities with specific characteristics, and that only 5.2 per cent of available tree hollows were suitable in the Tasmanian forests. Worse still, they detected a high level of nocturnal predation on the contents of Swift Parrot nests, including adult females, by Sugar Gliders, a mammal species introduced to Tasmania from mainland Australia.

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Robotic herding of a flock of birds using drones

Date:  August 30, 2018

Source:  The Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST)

Summary:

Researchers made a new algorithm for enabling a single robotic unmanned aerial vehicle to herd a flock of birds away from a designated airspace. This novel approach allows a single autonomous quadrotor drone to herd an entire flock of birds away without breaking their formation.

Professor David Hyunchul Shim at KAIST in collaboration with Professor Soon-Jo Chung of Caltech and Professor Aditya Paranjape of Imperial College London investigated the problem of diverting a flock of birds away from a prescribed area, such as an airport, using a robotic UVA. A novel boundary control strategy called the m-waypoint algorithm was introduced for enabling a single pursuer UAV to safely herd the flock without fragmenting it.

The team developed the herding algorithm on the basis of macroscopic properties of the flocking model and the response of the flock. They tested their robotic autonomous drone by successfully shepherding an entire flock of birds out of a designated airspace near KAIST's campus in Daejeon, South Korea. This study is published in IEEE Transactions on Robotics.

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Maryland conservation group says drone pilot buzzed bald eagle's nest in Pasadena

Chris Eberly, executive director of the Maryland Bird Conservation Partnership discuses the effects drones have on nesting eagles and other species. 

Selene San Felice

Eagles and drones are not friends in flight, the Maryland Bird Conservation Partnership warns after a recent Pasadena incident.

After a drone pilot was reported to police for bringing his drone close to an eagle and causing another to leave its nest, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and Maryland Natural Resources police got involved.

Kelly Hunt, a volunteer eagle nest monitor for the partnership, said she was checking on a nest this month next to Fort Smallwood Elementary School when she saw a man send his drone up to the nest.

As the drone approached the nest, the female flew away and a male — presumably the father — flew up to the drone for a few seconds before flying past it.

A bald eagle was filmed swimming Monday evening at the community beach in Epping Forest. Eagles can't fly when their feathers get soaked from being in the water too long.

Hunt warned the man he was disturbing the eagles and they could injure themselves if they attacked the remote-controlled copter. She said he refused to fly his drone away from the nest, saying he was within his Federal Aviation Administration rights.

“I understand how cool it is and the temptation to view what’s going on inside the nest, but not to the detriment of the eagles,” Hunt said.

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Drones join war on songbird trappers at Cyprus military bases

Ben Farmer, defence correspondent 

24 MARCH 2018 • 6:00AM

Police on British military bases in Cyprus have used drones and night vision goggles to turn the tide in a campaign against illegal trappers catching and killing hundreds of thousands of songbirds.

Officers working with forces personnel estimate they have cut the number of migratory songbirds caught in trappers’ nets by as much as 70 per cent and destroyed large amounts of kit used to catch them.

The year-long crackdown on illegal bird poaching on the British sovereign bases in Cyprus has resulted in a "huge" drop in the number of poachers operating inside the bases' territory.

Small migratory birds such as blackcaps are considered a traditional delicacy by some Cypriots and sophisticated trapping feeds a multimillion-pound illicit trade.

Gavin Williamson, the Defence Secretary, said: “Bird trapping is not only a cruel and barbaric trade, it lines the pockets of criminal gangs to the tune of thousands of pounds.

Read on  

#EpicDuckChallenge shows we can count on drones

Date:  February 13, 2018

Source:  University of Adelaide

Summary:

A few thousand rubber ducks, a group of experienced wildlife spotters and a drone have proven the usefulness and accuracy of drones for wildlife monitoring. A new study showed that monitoring wildlife using drones is more accurate than traditional counting approaches.

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Bird senses can improve drone navigation

February 8, 2018 by Signe Brinkløv, ScienceNordic

South American oilbirds combine echolocation and extremely sensitive vision to find their way through dark caves. Decoding how they do this could help develop autonomous drones.

The Danish Drone Strategy aims to put Denmark at the forefront of state-of-the-art drone technology. Both the number of commercial users and authorised drone operators are rising. But for security reasons, the law requires drones to operate within the drone pilot's range of sight.

This limits the use of drones to good visibility conditions and limits their full potential. For example, routine monitoring tasks could be hindered by foggy or cloudy weather. And emergency situations, such as a forest fire or a burning building, could benefit from a drone controlled not by a pilot on the ground, but autonomously via automatic recognition of obstacles.

The question is, how can we further develop and optimise drone technology to avoid such concerns?

Oilbirds, form South America, also known as the guácharo, might hold the answer. But before we get to that, let's consider some examples of how we imitate nature.

Active sensory perception and biomimetic inspiration

By mimicking the shape and function of nature, biologists and engineers have created so-called biomimetic robots that are experts in parkour, able to hear like a lizard, and smell like a sniffer dog.

Read more at: 

Vladimir Putin uses trained birds of prey to take down drones sent by spies or ISIS and guard his Kremlin HQ

FALCON CRAZY 

Falcons have been taught to swoop on rogue unmanned aircraft over Russia's seat of government in Moscow

By Patrick Knox

31st January 2018, 11:10 am

Updated: 31st January 2018, 1:17 pm

RUSSIAN strongman leader Vladimir Putin has specially trained birds of prey guarding his Kremlin HQ from drones, it's been revealed.

The fortified seat of government in Moscow has long used birds of prey to chase away pesky crows.

A Russian soldier from the Presidential regiment holds his falcon at the Cathedral Square outside the Moscow's Kremlin

But now falcons have been trained to take out drones amid fears spies could use them - or worse ISIS use them as a weapon.  

It is understood the raptor birds are better able to target small drones than hawks.

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Replicating peregrine falcon attack strategies could help down rogue drones

December 4, 2017

Researchers at Oxford University have discovered that peregrine falcons steer their attacks using the same control strategies as guided missiles.

The findings, which overturn previous assumptions that peregrines' aerial hunting follows simple geometric rules, could be applied to the design of small, visually guided drones that can take down other 'rogue' drones in settings such as airports or prisons.

The research, initially funded by the US Air Force Research Laboratory and published open access in the journal PNAS, may also give scientists greater insight into the pursuit behaviours of other predatory species - in the air, in water, or on the ground.

Principal investigator Professor Graham Taylor, of the Oxford Flight Group in Oxford University's Department of Zoology, said: 'Falcons are classic aerial predators, synonymous with agility and speed. Our GPS tracks and on-board videos show how peregrine falconsintercept moving targets that don't want to be caught. Remarkably, it turns out that they do this in a similar way to most guided missiles. Our next step is to apply this research to designing a new kind of visually guided drone, able to remove rogue drones safely from the vicinity of airports, prisons and other no-fly zones.'

Read on  

Monitoring birds by drone

Forget delivering packages or taking aerial photographs — drones can even count small birds!

A new study, published in The Auk: Ornithological Advances, tests this new approach to wildlife monitoring and concludes that, despite some drawbacks, the method has the potential to become an important tool for ecologists and land managers.

Bird surveys provide crucial data for environmental management but they have limitations: some areas are difficult to access and surveyors vary in their skills at identifying birds. Using audio recordings made by unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) can help to combat both of these pitfalls, as hard-to-reach sites can be flown over and multiple people can review the resulting recordings.

Andrew Wilson of Gettysburg College and his colleagues tested the feasibility of this approach by using fishing line to suspend an audio recorder from a simple drone, first in trial runs on college athletic fields and then in real bird surveys on Pennsylvania State Game Lands, USA.

The field experiments on state game lands directly compared UAV data with traditional ground-based surveys of the same areas. A few bird species were undercounted by the UAV technique, such as Mourning Doves — which have extremely low-frequency calls that weren't picked up by the recorder — and Grey Catbirds, which occurred at such high densities that counting individual birds in the recordings was difficult. Overall, however, there were few significant differences between the results produced by the two methods.

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Drones scaring off migratory birds, say RSPB

By WMNJBayley | Posted: October 26, 2016

Some migratory birds fly the best part of 4,000 miles to get here each winter and face all manner of perils on the way – so it seems unfair that they could be endangered by tiny machines that are designed to fly for just 15 to 20 minutes.

That is what could be happening over the Westcountry’s major estuaries this winter as more and more hobbyists fly drones over the water for fun.

Big flocks of overwintering birds like geese can be alarmed by drones – and flying off in mass panic to escape could be harming their chances of survival, according to experts from the RSPB.

It is not only the tiny buzzing flying machines – larger low-flying micro-lites and even pet dogs left to run off-lead can make be a nuisance around the estuarine areas where over-wintering birds gather in large numbers to rest and to take on much needed nourishment between autumn and spring.

Now the RSPB is appealing for visitors to the Westcountry’s estuaries to put wildlife first, in the hope it stops incidents of the birds being disturbed.

The charity says the problem is particularly acute on the Exe estuary, where thousands of geese, ducks and waders congregate, including winter-residents and migratory birds passing through.

Many other of the Westcountry’s estuaries also hold internationally important numbers of wintering birds, and the last thing they need is to be disturbed by people, their dogs, or by machinery of one kind or another.

Peter Otley, site manager for the RSPB’s Exe estuary reserves, said: “The Exe is one of the best places in the UK to see geese, ducks and waders in winter, it’s a wonderful but fragile place and the birds are sensitive to disturbance. 

 

Read more at

Dogs, drones and microlights – it’s a bird’s life trying not to be disturbed

Media release FOR IMMEDIATE PUBLICATION

The RSPB is appealing for visitors to the Westcountry’s estuaries to put wildlife first, in the hope it stops incidents of wintering birds being disturbed. The problem is particularly acute on the Exe estuary, where thousands of geese, ducks and waders congregate, including winter-residents and migratory birds passing through. But many other of the Westcountry’s estuaries also hold internationally important numbers of wintering birds, and the last thing they need is to be disturbed by people, their dogs, or by machinery of one kind or another.

Dogs not being kept on leads where birds are gathered are a perennial problem, which has now been joined by contemporary menaces, such as intrusive drones and, occasionally, microlight aircraft being flown above flocks at very low altitude. The Exe estuary’s large flock of Brent geese offer an example: every year thousands arrive after their 3,000-mile journey from Siberia, and the last thing they need is to waste energy flying around after being disturbed by people, dogs, drones, or microlights. 

Peter Otley, site manager for the RSPB’s Exe estuary reserves, said: “The Exe is one of the best places in the UK to see geese, ducks and waders in winter, it’s a wonderful but fragile place and the birds are sensitive to disturbance. “So we urge everybody to put wildlife first if they visit the estuary and are near estuary’s birds. “You can’t miss the flocks, they’re obvious, from the air as well as on land, so please keep your distance and let the birds go about their business in peace.” Autumn and winter is a great time to watch waterfowl and waders and the RSPB has some advice for making the most of birding trips to the region’s estuaries: A spokesman said: “Waders and other estuary species, such as avocet, black-tailed godwit and widgeon, feed on exposed mud at low tide and roost above the tide line when the water covers their feeding grounds. 

“Favoured areas of shingle and mud sometimes draw thousands of birds together as they wait for the tide to fall again. It’s best to get in a good viewing position an hour or two beforehand, so that you can see the birds fly in, and, of course, avoid disturbing them as you come and go.” 

Ends For further information, images, or to arrange an interview, please contact: Chris Baker, RSPB Communications Officer, 01392 453299 / 07701 050010

Notes: The RSPB’s recently refurbished hide at Bowling Green Marsh, Topsham, is a superb place to see many of the waterfowl that congregate on the Exe estuary, and the high tide roost makes it one of the best places to see birds in South West England. Thinking of taking up bird watching? The RSPB is running a taster session at Dart’s Farm on November 3, in advance of its popular Birdwatching for Beginners course, beginning in March next year. The evening will include talks on migration of birds to the area in autumn and winter, the importance of the Exe for wildlife, and on some of the skills involved in becoming a birdwatcher, together with information about the full course.

Booking is essential and the taster session costs £10 (free to RSPB members).

Booking and further information on 01392 432691 or by email: swbooking@rspb.org.uk Chris Baker Communications Officer Tel: 01392 453299 Mobile: 07701 050010