Bird Survey and Bird Strike Control at Dali Airport, Yunnan Province

The projected ground surface area around the Dali airport was classified into 7 types of bird habitat, i.e., orchards or nurseries, mills or factories, villages, forests, water bodies, cropland and barren hills to obtain the basic ecological information for bird strike control in this area. Four surveys on bird species and corresponding numbers in the 7 types of habitats were conducted in the four seasons of 2010, and the characteristics of the habitat vegetation and those of the insect communities were also investigated at the same time. The threat extent of different bird species to the aviation safety was comprehensively analyzed according to the data of bird size, flight height, size of population and occurrence frequency. The survey showed that there were totally 81 bird species belonging to 31 families of 12 orders recorded in the peripheral area of Dali airport, among which 6 species were listed as highthreat species, 14 as threat species and 61 species were listed as less threat species in the light of their body size, flight activity and other behavior characters. The bird strike control strategy was proposed to secure the flight safety for the airport based on analyses of the topography, habitat, season change, food source and other factors.