Quantifying Raptors’ Flight Behavior to Assess Collision Risk and Avoidance Behavior to Wind Turbines

Abstract

Some wind farms have implemented automated camera-based monitoring systems, e.g., IdentiFlight to mitigate the impact of wind turbines on protected birds. These systems have promoted the collection of large amounts of unique data that can be used to describe flight behavior in a novel way. The aim of this study was to evaluate how this unique data can be used to create a robust quantitative behavioral analysis, that can be used to identify risk-prone flight behavior and avoidance behavior and thereby used to assess collision risk in the future. This was achieved through a case study at a wind farm on the Swedish island Gotland, where golden eagles (Aquila chrysaetos), white-tailed eagles (Haliaeetus albicilla), and red kites (Milvus milvus), were chosen as the bird species. These three species are generally rare breeds in Europe and have also been shown to be particularly vulnerable to collisions with wind turbines. The results demonstrate that data from the IdentiFlight system can be used to identify risk-prone flight behaviors, e.g., tortuous flight and foraging behavior. Moreover, it was found that these flight behaviors were affected by both weather conditions, but also their distance to the nearest wind turbine. This data can, thus, be used to evaluate collision risk and avoidance behavior. This study presents a promising framework for future research, demonstrating how data from camera-based monitoring systems can be utilized to quantitatively describe risk-prone behavior and thereby assess collision risk and avoidance behavior.

Influence of Turbidity on Foraging Behaviour in Three-Spined Sticklebacks (Gasterosteus aculeatus)

“…If behavioural instability does not have a hereditary component, it will not have evolutionary significance and is a purely plastic response. Several experiments could be designed to estimate the potential heritability of behavioural instability; for example, personality experiments where instead of only focusing on the quantification of a behavioural response, components like variation, symmetry, and kurtosis should be considered [19,20,34].…”

“…Pertoldi et al [18] suggested that an increased behavioural instabil-ity, which is described as variability in behaviour, could have an adaptative value in an unpredictable environment [18]. The concept of variability has, however, been extended by Pertoldi et al [18][19][20] as it has been described not only by the variance and/or the interquartile range (IQR) but also with the kurtosis and the skewness (asymmetry) of the distributions. All these parameters affect the median absolute deviation, which is a measure of variability in a set of data and is estimated by the median distance that the data values are from the median.…”

Facing Danger: Exploring Personality and Reactions of European Hedgehogs (Erinaceus europaeus) towards Robotic Lawn Mowers

“…Another important aspect that characterises the personality of an individual is the degree of behavioural instability, which quantifies the degree of unpredictability of a behavioural response. The notion of behavioural instability, as suggested by Pertoldi et al (2016) and others [55][56][57], goes beyond being solely described by the variance and/or interquartile range (IQR). It also encompasses the kurtosis and skewness (i.e., asymmetry) of the distributions.…”