Timothy Boycott

Billions of birds fatally collide with human-made structures each year and this source of mortality is a significant threat to bird populations. Collisions also pose serious challenges for human industries. Efforts to reduce collisions have largely centered on making structures more visible to birds but have been met with limited success. Solutions addressing the environmental context of hazards and the behavioral ecology of at-risk birds offer more tangible results. Birds have largely evolved without tall human-made structures in their flight path. Consequently, avian perception and behavior may not be suitably primed to detect these evolutionarily novel hazards. Work in captive settings has shown that conspicuous acoustic signals may aid in drawing attention of flying birds to collision hazards. We aim to corroborate these findings in a field setting by projecting acoustic signals into air space surrounding communication towers and quantifying differential movement patterns of flying birds between treatment and control trials as indicators of collision avoidance behavior. We also aim to identify which elements of acoustic signals elicit more collision-avoidance behavior in flying birds. Tests of differing types of acoustic signals in our field trials will allow for comparisons of the efficacy of signal types. Findings from these studies will inform the field of avian sensory ecology and assess the use of acoustic signals in collision mitigation measures.

Timothy Boycott is a second-year M.S. candidate in the Biology Department at William & Mary. He has a broad interest in studying animal behavioral ecology in a contemporary context, as a way of addressing some of the pressing conservation concerns of today. His current research focuses on using understandings of avian sensory biology to reduce the incidence of collisions between birds and human-made structures.