Observational Study of Human Disturbance on Bird Behaviour in City of Vaughan Ponds – Data

The following observation study of bird behaviour in ponds with high or low human disturbance from the period of October 9, 2020 to October 12, 2020. The purpose of the correlational study was to determine a relationship between level of human disturbance in pond habitats and frequency of fleeing bird behaviour. A list of Vaughan ponds was divided into high human disturbance and low human disturbance habitats, with high disturbance habitats defined as a circumference trail alongside the pond and a low disturbance habitat as a minimum of 50 meters between the pond and human interference. From this, two ponds from each level of disturbance were randomly selected using a random number generator to allow for site replication. All four ponds were visited each day for a total of four days, henceforth a total of 4 replications at each pond site. Each day, all four ponds were visited during dusk, from 4:30 pm to 6:30 pm, for a duration of 30 minutes at pond to maintain consistency in the time of observation between locations and days. The weather on all four days was sunny, clear skies, except for October 12, 2020 where it was slightly cloudy. At each pond, three transects were randomly picked using a random choice generator for directional values – front, back, left, right – along with their respective metres using a random number generator. Observations were noted at each pond, particularly each transect, for the following two bird behaviours and their respective frequencies: fleeing and non-fleeing. Furthermore, human disturbance – in respect to the number of people in a particular transect –was recorded for each transect as well. After data collection, a dataset was created together with metadata and published to figshare for open science contribution.