A Remote Egg-oiling System with Autonomous and Automated Target Object Identification for Nuisance Bird Management

The problem of pest bird control is a thorny one for wildlife managers. A useful tool for controlling the numbers of pest birds is egg oiling, a method to render eggs non-viable, but prior use was restricted to ground nesting species. Common ravens are serious pests of agriculture and attack many threatened and endangered species but nest in locations out of reach from the ground. Three years of development work on remote oiling of raven’s eggs by team partner Hardshell Labs has resulted in a drone system capable of reaching all raven nests, including in electrical transmission towers. BWCS has worked extensively on artificial intelligence (AI) systems capable of recognizing a variety of natural objects and organisms. We will join forces to create a remote egg-oiling (REO) drone capable of autonomously navigating to electrical tower raven nests, transmitting images of the nest to an operator on the ground and, when triggered, to deliver a stream of oil accurately to the eggs. The addition of AI technology to the REO drone promises to greatly expand the use of the method by wildlife managers and utilities as it will lower the barriers to its use by a wide array of field personnel.