Study conditions and gull response data for nocturnal unmanned aircraft system treatments used to prevent gulls from nesting on rooftops during nest material gathering phase

This data publication contains unmanned aircraft system (UAS) operational and general weather data from two building rooftops in the spring of 2021. These rooftops were located in Sandusky, Ohio and Chicago, Illinois and were our study locations for quantifying gull response to UAS hazing treatments in the nest material gathering phase (i.e., March to April). We hypothesized that nocturnal UAS operation, like nocturnal predator disturbance, might reduce gull numbers and, thus, collision risk to aircraft. Operation of UAS is weather dependent, hence we collected data on precipitation, average wind speed, as well as wind gusts at each study location and used these data to determine if UAS operation was feasible on a given day. If we were able to operate an UAS, we collected data on site-specific weather and gull reaction.
These data were collected to understand and quantify the role of UAS relative to wildlife hazing for aviation safety.
For more information about this study and these data, see Pfeiffer et al. (2023). These data were published on 12/16/2022. On 01/10/2023 the metadata was updated to include citation information for the newly published article Pfeiffer et al. (2023).