Tracking and identification of birds in flight remains a goal of aviation safety worldwide and conservation in North America. Marine surveillance radar, tracking radar and more recently weather radar have been used to monitor mass movements of birds. The emphasis has been on prediction of migration fronts where thousands of birds follow weather patterns across a large geographic area. Microphones have been stationed over wide areas to receive calls of these birds and help catalogue the diversity of species comprising these migrations.; A most critical feature of landbird migration is where the birds land to rest and feed. These habitats are not known and therefore cannot effectively be protected. For effective management of landbird migrants (nocturnal migrant birds), short-range flight behaviour (100–300 m above ground) is the critical air space to monitor. To ensure conservation efforts are focused on endangered species and species truly at risk, species of individual birds must be identified.; Short-range monitoring of individual birds is also important for aviation safety. Up to 75% of bird-aircraft collisions occur within 500 ft (153 m) above the runway. Identification of each bird will help predict its flight path, a critical factor in the prevention of a collision.; This thesis focuses on short-range identification of individual birds to localise birds in flight. This goal is achieved through fusing data from two sensor systems, radar and acoustic. This fusion provides more accurate tracking of birds in the lower airspace and allows for the identification of species of interest.; In the fall of 1999, an experiment was conducted at Prince Edward Point, a southern projection of land on the north shore of Lake Ontario, to prove that the fusion of radar and acoustic sensors enhances the detection, location and tracking of nocturnal migrant birds. As these birds migrate at night, they are difficult to track visually. However, they are detectable with X-band surveillance radar. They also emit a species-specific call, which provides identification and a second opportunity for tracking using an acoustic array.; Radar images and acoustic signals were digitised and stored directly to computer tape. Software written for this research was used to locate and identify birds from these data. The system was field calibrated to an altitude of 1523 m using an aircraft as a known target. Birds were tracked over altitudes of 127 m to 670 m.; The digital signals were verified against traditional methods of migration research. Mist net captures and visual and audio censuses of birds were taken each morning within the study area. Correspondence between these data and the electronic data demonstrated that this experiment was a successful attempt to identify tracks of nocturnal migrant birds using sensor fusion.
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