Fine-scale flight strategies of gulls in urban airflows indicate risk and reward in city living.

ABSTRACT: Birds modulate their flight paths in relation to regional and global airflows in order to reduce their travel costs. Birds should also respond to fine-scale airflows, although the incidence and value of this remains largely unknown. We resolved the three-dimensional trajectories of gulls flying along a built-up coastline, and used computational fluid dynamic models to examine how gulls reacted to airflows around buildings. Birds systematically altered their flight trajectories with wind conditions to exploit updraughts over features as small as a row of low-rise buildings. This provides the first evidence that human activities can change patterns of space-use in flying birds by altering the profitability of the airscape. At finer scales still, gulls varied their position to select a narrow

SUBMITTER: Shepard EL 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4992718 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature