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

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 range of updraught values, rather than exploiting the strongest
updraughts available, and their precise positions were consistent with a
strategy to increase their velocity control in gusty conditions.
Ultimately, strategies such as these could help unmanned aerial vehicles
negotiate complex airflows. Overall, airflows around fine-scale features
have profound implications for flight control and energy use, and
consideration of this could lead to a paradigm-shift in the way ecologists
view the urban environment.