Would this not depend on the species?  For example, owls and nighthawks vs. passerines? Also, I think you you need to be more specific in terms of the kind of human activities.  For example car traffic? human-generated noise? light pollution? The nature of the disturbance will be likely be important in terms of impacts on birds.

Best wishes, Alain, and good luck with this.

indeed, clarification is needed .... The problem is that we are facing is the increase of sports night (trail, orienteering ....) on the foreshore. To regulate these new activities, we look for the elements of the disturbance of waterfowl and shorebirds especially.

An important point is that we do not know the spatial distribution of birds on the site during the night (feed zone, altar ....). But this is also an activity can be more impactful night (noise, light ....).

To answer your question we need to know more details as Todd and Alain already wrote. Some nocturnal human activities, such as fireworks on new year's eve can cause severe countrywide disturbance of birds (see Shamoun-Baranes et al. Behavioral ecology 22: 1173-1177, 2011).

Hi Alain,

have you seen these papers? Mike Weston and colleagues have done a lot of work on beach-nesting birds including public attitudes towards their conservation. They may be able to help you out.

Weston, M. A., McLeod, E. M., Blumstein, D. T., & Guay, P.-J. (2012). A review of flight-initiation distances and their application to managing disturbance to Australian birds. Emu, 112, 269-286.

Weston, M. A., Antos, M. J., & Glover, H. K. (2009). Birds, buffers and bicycles: a review and case study of wetland buffers. The Victorian Naturalist: Birds in the urban environment: Biodiversity Symposium Special Issue, 126, 79-86.

Williams, K. J. H., Weston, M. A., Henry, S., & Maguire, G. S. (2009). Birds and beaches, dogs and leashes: dog owners' sense of obligation to leash dogs on beaches in Victoria, Australia. Human Dimensions of Wildlife, 14, 89-101.

Best of luck,

Gill

thank you very much for those papers that will be useful in the work that we will perform on the impact of activities on the disturbance of birds.

In the Canary Islands one of the main problems with conservation of birds is light pollution, mainly in the case of pelagic seabirds that are active in land by night, coming to their breeding sites or in the fledging period. The problem is very important, as many colonies of Cory's Shearwater are situated close to human settlements (sometimes even to big cities), and there are a lot of casualties linked to public lights, not only with this species, but also with Bulwer's Petrel, Barolo's or Macaronesian Shearwater, etc. Fortunately, from many years there are specific campaigns to reduce the damage of this conservation problem. On such topic there are several papers, like these:

Rodríguez, A. & B. Rodríguez (2009). Attraction of petrels to artificial lights in the Canary Islands: effects of the moon phase and age class. Ibis 151: 299-310.

Rodríguez, A., B. Rodríguez & M.P. Lucas (2012). Trends in numbers of petrels attracted to artificial lights suggest population declines in Tenerife, Canary Island. Ibis 154: 167-172.

Rodríguez, A., B. Rodríguez, Á.J. Curbelo, A. Pérez, S. Marrero & J.J. Negro (2012). Factors affecting mortality of shearwaters stranded by light pollution. Animal Conservation 15: 519-526.

Hi again.

In addition to the information about pelagic seabirds, I can say that sometimes other nocturnal birds, like owls and the Stone Curlew (Burhinus oedicnemus), can suffer some human disturbance during the night, especially in the case of people walking with dogs across areas in which there are breeding territories of Stone Curlew, or, much more important, road mortality. It's especially high in owls just during and after the fledging period. For example, in the Canaries there are sites in which road mortality of the Long-eared Owl (Asio otus) is really high, as there are new roads with an important traffic volume, even during the night, and there is a good population density of owls. 

I  just like here to mention some studies made on escape behavior of black grouse facing different types of disturbance (made by albin Zeitler, in Bavarian alps).

The main point of these studies, I think, should be relevant to many species in various environments. That is, the flushing distance of a local population of black grouse is a function of the predictability of the source of disturbance. In this ski resort, a black grouse flushed at short distance (few meters) when source (skiers) where seen in classical location (ski runs) and at usual hours (during day-light from 8h to 18h); But the flushing distance rise at more than 100 m when the skiers were out of ski runs, and when they rose instead of coming down. I suppose that this distance should be even longer at night.

So you need to specify, what is the usual behavior of our target species, what is disturbance regime in space and time and look for correspondence between the two.

Hi again.

Another bird species which suffers some disturbance and mainly road mortality by night is the Eurasian Woodcock (Scolopax rusticola). We have found several times dead individuals in different roads which are in forest areas, especially of laurel forest, where its densities are higher than in any other type of habitat of the Canary Islands. This factor may be very important for the conservation of the species here, in the Canaries. As you must know, the species developes its activities frequently during the night.