Trends in Bird Strikes

A bird strike is when a bird ends up running into a man made vehicle such as a train, plane or automobile. However planes are most noted for this phenomenon since they are flying with the birds. These not only causes the bird's death but terrible damage to the planes. These events have been attributed to many plane or helicopter crashes, most notably the Miracle on the Hudson in 2009. (For some information on this event look up "US Airways Flight 1549" or the "Miracle on the Hudson" search it on Wikipedia or Youtube) There was even a bird strike recorded during the early part of the Space Shuttle Discovery's flight in 2005. This and the following two posts will display our recent findings on the topic, please enjoy.

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Bird strikes occur all over the planet but for this study we have focused on the United States of America and its statistics with bird strikes. Above is a gradient map that shows bird strikes recorded by state. The darker, the more that have occurred there. Unsurprisingly, the highest population centers of people also hold the highest bird strike totals likely due to the multitude of aircraft. Florida, although not extremely populous, is one of the largest vacationing areas in the world which would mean planes are constantly crisscrossing with birds as they migrate. Below is a chart which shows how many bird strikes are recorded by the weather occurring at the time. Although it would appear as clouds don't really seem to matter in comparison, we are handicapped by the third of information that gives us no data on the weather. Logic would think, clouds would equal more bird strikes; however this shows otherwise. The speed of the plane likely has far more to do with bird strikes seeing as a single or small flock of birds would be hard to see regardless of the weather.

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Additionally the trend of bird strikes had been going up at a steady pace, then seems to have suddenly jumped between 2008 and 2010 and then goes back to a slow incline. This sudden increase in bird strikes may have been caused by weather confusing birds' flight patterns or a sudden increase in the reporting of bird strikes after the Hudson River event scared some pilots. Another interesting trend is how the birds shown below are the primary casualties, once you go below that the number of birds per species drops significantly. However this information is also incomplete due to the many birds which became too mangled to be identified thus lumped into large generic categories. Gulls are likely struck a lot due to their proximity to coastal airports while Mourning Doves are more likely in the non-coastal regions. No wonder their mourning.

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