Measuring disturbance at swift breeding colonies due to the visual aspects of a drone

There is a growing body of research indicating that drones can disturb animals. However, it is usually unclear whether the disturbance is due to visual or auditory cues. Here, we examined the effect of drone flights on the behavior of great dusky swifts Cypseloides senex and white-collared swifts St...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores: Pires Mesquita, Geison|||0000-0002-5299-0291, Rodríguez-Teijeiro, José Domingo|||0000-0001-7787-9293, Wich, Serge A., Mulero-Pázmány, Margarita|||0000-0002-0303-9360
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Fecha de publicación:2021
País:España
Institución:Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
Repositorio:Dipòsit Digital de Documents de la UAB
Idioma:inglés
OAI Identifier:oai:ddd.uab.cat:239253
Acceso en línea:https://ddd.uab.cat/record/239253
https://dx.doi.org/urn:doi:10.1093/cz/zoaa038
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:Cypseloides senex
Disturbance
Drones
Multirotors
Streptoprocne zonaris
Unmanned aircraft systems
Descripción
Sumario:There is a growing body of research indicating that drones can disturb animals. However, it is usually unclear whether the disturbance is due to visual or auditory cues. Here, we examined the effect of drone flights on the behavior of great dusky swifts Cypseloides senex and white-collared swifts Streptoprocne zonaris in 2 breeding sites where drone noise was obscured by environmental noise from waterfalls and any disturbance must be largely visual. We performed 12 experimental flights with a multirotor drone at different vertical, horizontal, and diagonal distances from the colonies. From all flights, 17% caused <1% of birds to temporarily abandon the breeding site, 50% caused half to abandon, and 33% caused more than half to abandon. We found that the diagonal distance explained 98.9% of the variability of the disturbance percentage and while at distances.