As one of many aspects of my former work as an air traffic control assistant I carried out thousands of hours on the airfield doing active bird control.
RAF Kinloss suffered a terrible fatal take off birdstrike accident and as a result of the post accident recommendations the bird control team became full time covering all operational hours at Kinloss.
One part of the service included watching approach and departure paths, records of bird activity were kept, a pattern of bird movement tracked. This included large skeins of geese and birds feeding on the tidal estuary.
During the five years of my time in charge of the bird control unit we had no damage caused by birdstrikes. Air traffic relayed our warnings to aircraft resulting in take off delays, overshoots and circuit training was avoided during the high risk times.
Pioneering work in bird control came from the Dutch air force, in the Uk courses have been organised by MAFF.
To get the best out of the bird control system you need dedicated keen operatives and an air traffic system to relay warnings plus an airport authority who fully understand that it is not a part time job done by a person who skives inside the office and dashes outside to fire off a few shellcrackers
every hour.
I wonder if a proper study of bird activity has ever been done at New York airports?