Follow the link to read about a rare bird killed by a wind turbine, many of which now surround our county and country as they are currently being erected like 9 pin skittles........worrying!
Q: Could the designers make them more bird friendly?
Q:Could the Redcar turbines, and others in future be better situated?
Q: Will we ever know how many birds are wiped out by these.......I think not.
Q Who is accountable and would it be a good idea to invite such to the next bird club meeting for members to express their concerns etc?
Please feel free to express any constructive viewpoints.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2350267/Rare-bird-white-throated-needletail-killed-wind-turbine-crowd-twitchers.html
i fear for peregrines,that will love to fly towards these high platforms, only to be knocked out.at first i thought they were a good idea ,now i hate the sight of them.
Im not so sure its as simple as it might appear. Some of the reports I have seen by birders have said that the bird in Harris was flying erratically almost hitting people never mind wind turbines. Swifts, swallows etc catch insects a few mm in size in mid flight you would think that they are the most unlikely birds of all not to sense in one way or the other, the blades of a wind turbine.
I was in Orkney recently and there is a RSPB reserve at a place called Burgar Hil, the hide is almost underneath an 80m wind turbine. Red Throated Divers and Hen Harriers breed there, and there has never been a recorded collision.
Perhaps the degree of danger is to do with specific sighting of installations, bird species, weather conditions, birds ability to adapt their behaviour and a range of other variables.
Pretty sure the RSPB have been generally supportive of wind turbines as they pose considerably less threat to birds and wildlife generally than global warming.
Sad though this incident was, how many birds are killed annually by road and rail traffic servicing our fossil fuel power stations ?
One individual driving a car to work in a power station will probably kill more birds annually than a wind turbine. In fact the 40 twitchers travelling from all parts of the land to the Hebrides to see the bird, could well have killed more than one bird between them in their cars.
Swifts generally are not cut out to low level feeding and prefer to trawl the upper levels for insects. You need only check the road kills between east and west Saltholme pools in poor weather when they are emulating hirundines and not too alertly or agilely either. Perhaps this is even more serious a problem with large swift species, as I recall an Alpine swift , I watched once at Scarborough, which nearly struck the monument on the hill where it was feeding.
Wind Turbines do seem to get a bad press, but I think they are here to stay. They will have to go some to kill more birds than oil spills though, and nobody seems to be suggesting we stop drilling for and transporting that.
It seems birds will always play second fiddle to our needs.
Quote from: chip f on July 13, 2013, 09:54:40 PM
It seems birds will always play second fiddle to our needs.
Agree, we are the species, who have basically, wrecked everything on the planet.
Depressing but true, Ghandi said " There's enough for mans need, but not for mans greed". And it seems we can do nothing about it.