Some thoughts
I've been doing work on a project involving FW operations and birdstrikes at aerodromes. Some figures may be of interest here to the rotary comunity. Due to dealing with FW ops I looked at arrival and departure stats, to determine trends etc and note that the research was based around FW related operations.
69% of all departure strikes happened at or below 250ft AGL
59% of all arrival strikes occurred at or below 500ft AGL
85% of all recorded strikes occured when Pilot reported visibility in EXCESS of 10km. The number of birdstrikes drops dramtically when the runway is reported as wet, i.e. its raining or has just finished raining.
We don't appear to have any significant data on time of strikes, however it is generally regarded that dawn and dusk are 'prime time' for bird strikes.
These are probably the most relevant stats based on an intensively operated flying programme Europe wide.
There does not appear top be any specific evidence that landing lights illuminated prevent birdstrikes, and neither do colour schemes or those 'swiggles' on the spinners of props/fans.
One European airfield is looking at raptor use, even though there are natural avian predators at the same airfield. This is because the species do recognise each other and the threat they pose to each other, so the 'they all recognise sillouette X or Y as a threat' does not unfortunately hold true.
If there is a bird control unit at the airfield you operate from, its worth popping in to see them, they may well have knowledge of bird concentrations/local habitats/migratory routes that you are unaware of and vice versa of course!. For remote sites or those unconnected to an airport theres quite a bit you can do to minimise the possibility of birdstrikes in the vicinity of the landing pad too. I can drone on for a while on this but I'll end now, if anyone has any q's them ask away and I'll try to answer them as best I can.