With the emergence of new IoT wireless access technologies, shared frequency bands are expected to see unprecedented congestion levels. Using low-altitude unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) for provisioning IoT coverage would require a very careful consideration for the existing interference levels in the radio spectrum. This paper presents a tractable analytic framework developed using tools from stochastic geometry to characterize the spectrum occupancy as seen from a UAV perspective. The framework is supported by empirical measurements conducted using a software defined receiver mounted on a UAV.