It didn’t work for me recently… Seagulls I’ve found have backed off slightly, but I had a run in with an Oystercatcher and it wasn’t caring if my drone was flashing all the colours of the rainbow, it wanted a fight! 
Nesting season makes some birds defensive, some are more aggressive than others. 100% they are trying to get you away from their nests’.
Not many birds will attack a large object mid flight. Peregrine’s are famous for doing it with pigeons, but even they are selective. They have far too much to lose if they strike a drone.
The truth is; they think your drone is a predator. Best approach? Take their hint and simply fly away and leave them alone, and then stay away from that particular spot for as long as it takes for their chicks to fledge, which will be several weeks.
Chasing birds with a drone to deter them, I wouldn’t recommend it, especially raptors which are a legally protected species.
I’d be surprised if attaching stickers to the drone would work. Birds are more attuned to raptor silhouettes, not the colours or details which they’re unlikely to notice during flight.
I’m a big fan of drones and birds, if we give them space they’ll leave us alone.
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Don’t have any issues with the gulls here on Poole Harbour just the stupid oystercatchers, they seem to home in on drones
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Hi @Speedbird002, it looks as though you’re quite new here 
Why not nip over to the Introductions page, and say hello properly and tell us a bit about yourself. 
Lost my Mini 2SE to gull mobbing last year. Flying off Cardiff Bay Barrage, and filming the sealock entrance to Cardiff Docks in failing light just after sunset. There were about a dozen of them, and they meant business, and in the failing light I didn’t react quickly enough; the Airdata record shows a series of hits over a few seconds and then the drone spun into the drink. They followed it down,
I have had no problems with gulls (or any other birds) before or since this attack. There are frequently gulls and other birds ‘about’ when I am flying but they ignore the drone and carry on their own business. They must be aware of it’s presence, they are pretty sharp eyed and it makes a noise! My attack was after the end of breeding season, so not that, and I suspect the mob were juveniles showing off, like human juveniles do sometimes! But I’ve been more wary of birds in the same airspace as me (it’s their airspace, really, not mine) since this event.
Did some filming around Caerphilly Castle in November, and there are geese there. These worried me a little, as they can be quite aggressive on the ground (friend of mine with a smallholding uses them to protect her chooks from foxes), but they didn’t bother me at all! Fast vertical climbing would leave these in the dust once you are airborne; they take a good distance to take off from water!
Luckily, I’ve yet to have any problems with Oytercatchers, but it will happen I’m sure; I do a lot of coastal flying!
All wild birds are legally protected - barring exceptional circumstances.
It’s mostly protective behaviour, especially with the Oyster Catchers and Curlews. Breeding season runs from April to August so the decent/sensible thing is to just avoid the areas they are protecting. Only bird I’ve had an issue with was a Heron and I reckon that was just curiosity.
I’ve been attacked way out on the Solent and well away from breeding grounds. So in respect to Oystercatchers, they will have a pop anywhere.
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Oyster catchers aren’t the brightest, there’s one that nests on a busy roundabout right outside a Macdonalds every flipin year. I have a pair that regularly nest on the river bank across from me so I keep myself the dogs and the drone well clear until the young are up and flying.
The thing is to have empathy for the animals whether wild or domestic and just keep the drone well away. Some will abandon their nests and or young if disturbed and I’m sure that as responsible people we wouldn’t want to that, others can panic and stampede causing damage to themselves and others.
Animals don’t know what a drone is so it’s up to us to do the thinking for them and modify our behaviour accordingly.
You think? Come and join me one day at my regular flying spot and put that to the test where’s there’s a plethora of them residing very close by. Never underestimate any bird of a coastal habitat.
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Any bird that consistently nests on a busy roundabout on the main arterial route through a region is pretty dumb, I can only assume it’s the gravel she likes for nest making. Mind you it’s at least 8 miles from the coast the pair near me are about 16 miles inland. Hampshire is a hell of a way to go to fly a drone 
I do sometimes go for a wander along the Solway coast some amazing scenery and bird life, can be a bit bleak and breezy.
I bet that pisses off the local foxes!
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This is a good point, though the gulls that killed my Mini 2SE were just a group, probably last years juvenile hatchlings, showing off to each other like bored human teenagers do. Nearly all our local gulls nest on the Holm islands in the Bristol Channel, though some nest and breed on large roofs. This was after breeding season, by about 3 weeks…
Animals don’t know what drones are, and evolution has taught them that curiosity = something else’s dinner, so anything unknown is treated as a threat. For birds, this means that anything flying that they don’t immediately recognise, and a lot that they do recognise, is by definition is a threat, which can be dealt with in several ways. One is to keep your head down, or even (as in the case of some groundnesting birds) fake an injury, limping about with a droopy wing to distract raptors away from the nest. You’ll note that most groundnesters can ascend very quickly! Another is to mob-attack the threat, which will almost certainly bring a drone down unless you manage to escape by rocket up in S mode. Or, if you’re big enough, like a buzzard or an eagle, direct one-on-one battle if you haven’t ascended quickly enough; these are the sorts of birds thst can cause terminal damage in the air!
You can easily affect the success rate of breeding without realising it. Ground- and tree-nesters will see a drone as a hovering X shape in silhouette and think ‘Kestrel, stay still’; if drones are present over a ground nest for any great period feeding of chicks is interrupted and the brood could fail, and you didn’t even realise the havoc you caused! The same might be true of small mammals and lizards, the sort of animals that are common prey for avian raptors. Most of the time your drone won’t make much difference, but where stocks are low and breeding survival rates are critical, it might! Such locations are usually SSSI’s, and common sense is to avoid them in the breeding seasons unless you know that they have not been designated thus because of breeding birds or animals. No geological feature or rare plant is going to be bothered by a drone flying over it, and most animals won’t be either unless you deliberately wind them up, in which case you deserve all you get, but all bets are off in breeding and nesting seasons!
I’m wary of lesser black-backed gulls now, but have had no further problem; I’d think twice about flying anywhere near a noisy group of them, though. I’ll take uav-hampshire’s word about oystercatchers; I have no experience of them while droning (yet) and he has lots, but I am aware that they fly mob-handed and are pretty tough cookies; you see them playing with the waves in big storms and terrible winds, not much fazes them! I’d be wary of Skuas/Bonxies if I knew they were about as well!
Nobody with an ounce of decency about them wants to interfere with animals going about their business, but sometimes their business involves murderous intentions towards drones, and, as in my Kestrel example above, we may not always fully realise the trouble we are causing.
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