Bat, insect, and bird activity at a wind turbine in Colorado experimentally illuminated with ultraviolet light at night in 2019 to try and deter bats

Certain species of tree-dwelling bats die after colliding with the moving blades of industrial wind turbines. Based on the speculation that these bats approach turbines after visually mistaking them for trees, we tested a potential light-based deterrence method. It is likely that the affected bats see ultraviolet (UV) light at low intensities. Here, we present the results of a multi-month experiment to cast dim, flickering UV light across wind turbine surfaces at night and concurrently monitored bat, bird, and insect activity using a thermal-imaging surveillance camera. This data release consists of a file of tabular digital data that includes nightly counts of bat, bird, and insect detections derived from thermal video and used in modeling temporal response to experimental dim ultraviolet illumination of a wind turbine.