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Opening the black box of bird-window collisions: passive video recordings in a residential backyard

Collisions with windows on buildings are a major source of bird mortality. The current understanding of daytime collisions is limited by a lack of empirical data on how collisions occur in the real world because most data are collected by recording evidence of mortality rather than pre-collision beh...

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Autores principales: Samuels, Brendon, Fenton, Brock, Fernández-Juricic, Esteban, MacDougall-Shackleton, Scott A.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: PeerJ Inc. 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9784330/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36570015
http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.14604
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author Samuels, Brendon
Fenton, Brock
Fernández-Juricic, Esteban
MacDougall-Shackleton, Scott A.
author_facet Samuels, Brendon
Fenton, Brock
Fernández-Juricic, Esteban
MacDougall-Shackleton, Scott A.
author_sort Samuels, Brendon
collection PubMed
description Collisions with windows on buildings are a major source of bird mortality. The current understanding of daytime collisions is limited by a lack of empirical data on how collisions occur in the real world because most data are collected by recording evidence of mortality rather than pre-collision behaviour. Based on published literature suggesting a causal relationship between bird collision risk and the appearance of reflections on glass, the fact that reflections vary in appearance depending on viewing angle, and general principles of object collision kinematics, we hypothesized that the risk and lethality of window collisions may be related to the angle and velocity of birds’ flight. We deployed a home security camera system to passively record interactions between common North American bird species and residential windows in a backyard setting over spring, summer and fall seasons over 2 years. We captured 38 events including 29 collisions and nine near-misses in which birds approached the glass but avoided impact. Only two of the collisions resulted in immediate fatality, while 23 birds flew away immediately following impact. Birds approached the glass at variable flight speeds and from a wide range of angles, suggesting that the dynamic appearance of reflections on glass at different times of day may play a causal role in collision risk. Birds that approached the window at higher velocity were more likely to be immediately killed or stunned. Most collisions were not detected by the building occupants and, given that most birds flew away immediately, carcass surveys would only document a small fraction of window collisions. We discuss the implications of characterizing pre-collision behaviour for designing effective collision prevention methods.
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spelling pubmed-97843302022-12-24 Opening the black box of bird-window collisions: passive video recordings in a residential backyard Samuels, Brendon Fenton, Brock Fernández-Juricic, Esteban MacDougall-Shackleton, Scott A. PeerJ Animal Behavior Collisions with windows on buildings are a major source of bird mortality. The current understanding of daytime collisions is limited by a lack of empirical data on how collisions occur in the real world because most data are collected by recording evidence of mortality rather than pre-collision behaviour. Based on published literature suggesting a causal relationship between bird collision risk and the appearance of reflections on glass, the fact that reflections vary in appearance depending on viewing angle, and general principles of object collision kinematics, we hypothesized that the risk and lethality of window collisions may be related to the angle and velocity of birds’ flight. We deployed a home security camera system to passively record interactions between common North American bird species and residential windows in a backyard setting over spring, summer and fall seasons over 2 years. We captured 38 events including 29 collisions and nine near-misses in which birds approached the glass but avoided impact. Only two of the collisions resulted in immediate fatality, while 23 birds flew away immediately following impact. Birds approached the glass at variable flight speeds and from a wide range of angles, suggesting that the dynamic appearance of reflections on glass at different times of day may play a causal role in collision risk. Birds that approached the window at higher velocity were more likely to be immediately killed or stunned. Most collisions were not detected by the building occupants and, given that most birds flew away immediately, carcass surveys would only document a small fraction of window collisions. We discuss the implications of characterizing pre-collision behaviour for designing effective collision prevention methods. PeerJ Inc. 2022-12-20 /pmc/articles/PMC9784330/ /pubmed/36570015 http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.14604 Text en © 2022 Samuels et al. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
spellingShingle Animal Behavior
Samuels, Brendon
Fenton, Brock
Fernández-Juricic, Esteban
MacDougall-Shackleton, Scott A.
Opening the black box of bird-window collisions: passive video recordings in a residential backyard
title Opening the black box of bird-window collisions: passive video recordings in a residential backyard
title_full Opening the black box of bird-window collisions: passive video recordings in a residential backyard
title_fullStr Opening the black box of bird-window collisions: passive video recordings in a residential backyard
title_full_unstemmed Opening the black box of bird-window collisions: passive video recordings in a residential backyard
title_short Opening the black box of bird-window collisions: passive video recordings in a residential backyard
title_sort opening the black box of bird-window collisions: passive video recordings in a residential backyard
topic Animal Behavior
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9784330/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36570015
http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.14604
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