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Height Distribution Of Birds Recorded By Collisions With Civil Aircraft, Richard A. Dolbeer

USDA Wildlife Services: Staff Publications

The National Wildlife Strike Database for Civil Aviation in the United States contained 38,961 reports of aircraft collisions with birds (bird strikes) from 1990–2004 in which the report indicated the height above ground level (AGL). I analyzed these strike reports to determine the distribution of all strikes and those strikes causing substantial damage to aircraft by height. For the 26% of strikes above 500 feet (152 m) AGL (n=10,143), a simple negative exponential model, with height as the independent variable, explained 99% of the variation in number of bird strikes per 1,000-foot (305-m) interval. Strikes declined consistently by 32% every …