Data and code from: Nocturnal flight call monitoring reveals in-flight behavioral alteration by avian migrants in response to artificial light at night

The world in which birds evolved to migrate has been drastically altered
in the Anthropocene by artificial light. Sources of light such as urban
centers or bright upward-facing lights attract migrants, altering their
behavior, especially during inclement weather, often leading to mortality.
Seemingly less extreme sources, such as pole-mounted floodlighting
ubiquitous throughout much of the world, have received comparatively less
study, and migrant responses to such sources are poorly understood. We
studied migrant behavior in relation to light at White Sands Missile Range
(New Mexico, USA) by recording nocturnal flight calls at sites with and
without lights during non-inclement weather. We collected 103,424 h of
recordings and detected 2,851,863 calls over three fall migration seasons.
We assessed how temporal, weather, and lighting variables explain
variability in call rates between light and dark sites, and examined how
different taxonomic groups behave in relation to light. Contrary to
predictions, call rates were higher at dark sites than at light sites, and
this difference was strongest early in the migration season. We found
illuminated sites with a greater proportion of shielded lights, or with
lights of higher dominant wavelengths (warmer color temperatures), had
higher call rates (closely resembling dark sites) than other light sites,
indicating that these factors may reduce impact to migrants. Our taxonomic
analyses revealed consistent differences in call rate between light and
dark sites for warblers, but no difference for most sparrows. Our findings
indicate that lights alter behavior, but the use of “bird-friendly”
lighting strategies may reduce this impact. The code and datasets found
herein correspond to the manuscript "Nocturnal flight call monitoring
reveals in-flight behavioral alteration by avian migrants in response to
artificial light at night" published in Biological Conservation. The
code file (written in R Markdown) accesses each of the datasets included
herein to reproduce the analyses of the related manuscript.