Biogeographical patterns in the seasonality of bird collisions with aircraft

Bird collisions with aircraft pose a serious threat to human safety. However, broad-scale patterns in how bird strikes might vary through space and time have yet to be fully understood. Here, we conducted a biogeographical study of bird strikes to answer two questions: (1) Are bird strikes higher at certain times of the year in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres? and (2) Is seasonality in bird strikes more prominent in the Northern Hemisphere than in the Southern Hemisphere? We collated data on monthly bird strikes from 122 airports across the globe and used circular statistics to test for hemispherical asymmetries in the circular mean and variance in bird strikes. Results showed that annual peaks in bird strikes occurred between late summer to autumn seasons, and as a result, they occurred at opposite times of year in the northern and southern hemispheres. Results also showed that bird strikes were more seasonal in the Northern Hemisphere than the Southern Hemisphere, where strikes ..., We focused on bird strikes instead of all wildlife strikes since birds strikes have resulted in considerably more human fatalities (Avisure 2024), thus posing a larger threat to human safety than strikes with other groups. We searched the Google Web, Google Scholar, and Web of Science search engines for data on monthly bird strikes at airports using the keywords ‘bird strike’ with ‘airport’, ‘seasonal’, ‘monthly’ and ‘annual’. The language settings allowed for search results in any language. We included sources that reported bird strikes in each calendar month over a minimum of 12 months at individual airports. The data availability ranged from one year to 20 years (Table S1). Monthly data from studies conducted over multiple years were averaged for each month among years prior to analyses. Apart from online sources, data for Wellington Airport were obtained via personal communication with airport personnel. Studies that reported either yearly bird strikes for individual airports, or mo..., , # Biogeographical patterns in bird collisions with aircraft

[https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.h9w0vt4s4](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.h9w0vt4s4)

This dataset contains previously published data on bird strikes at airports around the world. Data sources are listed below.

## Description of the data and file structure

In the .csv file attached, the monthly bird strikes for each location are provided along with the coordinates, duration of study, angles of mean vector, circular standard deviations and data sources.

## Sharing/Access information

Data was derived from the following sources:

* Aas, C. K., Bentz. P. G., & Stenman, O. (2003). The Nordic Bird Strike Advisory Group – A Short Presentation. Bird Strike Committee Europe. [https://canadianbirdstrike.ca/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Aas_et_al_2003_0.pdf](https://canadianbirdstrike.ca/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Aas_et_al_2003_0.pdf)
* Anagnostopoulos, A. (2003). Bird strike risk assessment for Athens International Airport. Management r...,