A new way of understanding how our feathered friends see the world could explain better why birds collide with man-made objects, a study published in IBIS revealed this week.
Birds often fly into large objects clearly visible to the human eye, which can have fatal effects -- so much so that these collisions are the largest unintended human cause of avian fatalities across the globe.
This level of bird causes major concern for conservationists as endangered species are also affected. Research estimates a quarter of juvenile and six percent of adult white storks die annually from collisions with and electrocutions from man-made structures such as electricity pylons, office block windows and wind turbines.
However as Graham Martin, Professor of Avian Sensory Science at Birmingham University says in a press release, "Birds live in a different visual world to humans." Rather than the common thinking that birds' flight is guided by sight, similar to human perspective, Martin turned to sensory ecology to better understand a real bird's eye view.
This field of study looks at how animals relate and interact with their environment through sensory information. This recent research shows that birds rely on a subtle combination of vision, flying behaviour and what their senses tell them about their surroundings.
Dependency on this information affects how birds fly. As Martin says: "When in flight, birds may turn their heads to look down, either with the binocular field or with the lateral part of an eye's visual field. This results in certain species being at least temporarily blind in the direction of travel."
As they're not always looking straight ahead, it's hardly surprising that birds collide into man-made structures, regardless of their size. Furthermore, as Martin is exploring, avian frontal vision is suited for the detection of movement rather than special detail. This means birds are great at hunting smaller animals running along the ground, but less able to see static, if large, objects and more likely to be looking out for moving objects when flying.
Essentially, we should not be trying to make sense of the collisions with our human experience. Martin says, "Previously most proposed solutions to bird collisions only consider a human perspective of the problem," meaning humans have tried to solve the problem of bird collisions with their own vision, rather than that of birds.
With this new information man made objects can be made more bird-friendly. Although Martin stresses that solutions have to be considered on a species by species basis, he says, "It may be more effective to divert or distract birds from their flight path rather than attempt to make the hazard more conspicuous". Therefore, placing signals or sounds a suitable distance away from, rather than on, the hazard may prove better prevention of bird collisions.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
