Flight path data, height distribution and intensity of migrating birds measured by Radar

Tracking radar data and bird migration intensity data from Israel to Spain and from the Baltic Sea to the Sahara are available for analysis. All Data were collected by the ex-military Tracking-Radar-System, type “Superfledermaus” (see Bruderer et al. 1995). Data are stored as CSV-files and are downloadable.

Data available:

1.      File Site.csv includes all site dependent data like geographical coordinates and period of measurements.

2.      Track.csv contains data on flight path of birds, consisting of speed, altitude, direction, species as far as identified and more: One Dataset per track including average values of ground-, air-, wind-speeds and corresponding directions for track and heading, climbing rate, effective speed (measure for straightness) and in rarer temperature, humidity and pressure from soundings are included. Furthermore, for each flightpath any determination of measures that helps identifying species are given like wingbeat frequency and pattern, visually identifications and more.

3.      Species.csv includes all identified species (or “species groups”) tracked. Since most tracks were recorded during nighttime, only 18’117 of 401’254 of the available tracks contain speciescodes, that include 212 different species or “species groups” (see table 3). Systematics follow the IOC World Bird List version 14.2 updated 2024-07-17.

4.      VSUDensityH200.csv contains one dataset on “bird density” per 200 m height interval as objects (birds) pro km-3. The method VSU is described in Bruderer et al. (1995).

5.      FBMTRH50.csv contains Migration Traffic Rates per 50 m height interval. The method is described in Schmaljohann et al. (2008).

Relationships between tables and description of data including data formats are shown in TableSystem.pdf.