Drones ‘Unmanned Aerial Vehicle’ Documents Songbirds With No Bias

Ecologists proposed to combine acoustic monitoring and unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) in obtaining unbiased survey data for vocal bird species. UAVs are simply called drones.

According to the published journal in BioOne, conducting a survey data for songbirds is a very challenging task because of observer biases, habitat coverage biases, and logistical constraints.  By using drones together with bioacoustics monitoring, the enumerated biases could be reduced during surveys.

The researchers have tested the feasibility of the drones in counting songbirds using a low-cost quadcopter with a suspended simple and lightweight recorder. During the on-field testing, the researchers compared the detections from the new gadget with the standard point-count data from 51 stations.

The detections from the drones were proven to be comparable with the standard data for most songbirds. Some vocal bird species were unique and responded differently. Some of this species includes the mourning dove and the gray catbird.

Mourning Dove "Zenaida macroura" has a low-frequency voice thus; the bird's song is masked, provides weak resonance and underestimated by the voices of birds found in high densities. Gray catbird "Dumetella carolinensis" reflected to be the dominant species among the songbirds and shown in the detection of the drones.

The study shows that counting birds in terms of their songs and tweets is the standard way of monitoring bird species. As supported by Digital Trends, co-author of the study Andrew Wilson stated that obtaining a survey on bird's population is often difficult and time-consuming. Ecologists need to travel to diverse places just to get an accurate count. The drone can be a great help to reduce these challenges.

The habitats for most bird species is usually located in dense forest, hillsides, large wetlands, and rivers which is hard to travel to.  Accessing these areas using the newly improvised drone could be easier and efficient. This technique could supplement or even replace the traditional method wherein, ornithologists use their ears to document.

However, the excessive and loud noise from the drone can overpower the bioacoustics noise. As such, reducing the motor and rotor noise of the vehicle can solve the UAV's problem. For further experimentations and polished techniques, the authors then encouraged other researchers to study the known approach.