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Rich Franco

8 Years Ago

Dumb Question? Bird Deaths And Wind Turbines

I have a question and maybe somebody here knows. I read a lot about bird deaths caused by these huge wind turbines, mostly out West. But I've been out there and the speed of the blades doesn't seem to be that fast, like a real fan. So is it that the birds are killed at night? I've done a bunch of research on this and never can actually find the cause. Good news bad news, MANY more of these turbines are in our future...........

Rich

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Here you go, Rich -- I read this a few days ago and still had the tab open in my browser.

http://www.livescience.com/31995-how-do-wind-turbines-kill-birds.html

 

Ken Krug

8 Years Ago

Rich, there are five here in NJ, in Atlantic City, if you mean those modern day
windmills. I read the speed is 170 or so MPH, I guess at the tip, and if all turbines
are the same. It doesn't look that fast, I had thought maybe only 50-60 Mph.

Deceptive I guess. So every time we take ride there I study them, and try to imagine
a car going at the rate the blade is covering that much ground, and it probably is
going a lot faster than it looks.

As far as the birds probably during the day mostly if that is when they are most active.
Maybe it's just not noticed all the time unless observed a lot would be my guess.

 

Mike Savad

8 Years Ago

the only real bird deaths that i know of are the ones in that area that has the reflective mirrors that concentrate the sun at one point. birds would ignite in the sky and fall to the earth on fire. and they are called streakers by the people below. many a bird was set ablaze with that system.

birds aren't that bright though, and while the blade is slow, i'm betting it won't stop if it hits one. and if its a goose, well, that's a nice size target.

---Mike Savad
MikeSavad.com

 

Dan Turner

8 Years Ago

From the article (thanks Wendy!): "There is nothing in the evolution of eagles that would come near to describing a wind turbine," Grainger Hunt, a raptor specialist with the Peregrine Fund, told the AP. "There has never been an opportunity to adapt to that sort of threat."

Well...now there is! And adapt they will.


Dan Turner
Dan Turner's Seven Keys to Selling Art Online

 

Adam Jewell

8 Years Ago

Seems we should be more concerned about house cats

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/21/science/21birds.html?_r=0

 

CHERYL EMERSON ADAMS

8 Years Ago

There are a lot of things that kill birds. Airplane engines have to be build to a spec that can withstand a bird strike. It's sad that there's one more thing out there that's killing our increasingly diminished population of birds. The world is a poorer place without them.

That said, oil spills and some of the things the coal/petroleum industry does creates air pollution, and affects the environment in other ways that aren't good for the bird population, either. I hope fracking chemicals are as safe as the oil industry insists they are. Good luck getting that stuff out of the underground water supply, if it turns out to be toxic.
Nuclear energy comes with hair-raising waste disposal problems.

No perfect solutions.

 

Abbie Shores

8 Years Ago

They have now invented wind turbines with no blades.

 

Abbie, like the Dyson fan? Love that contraption! ;-)

You're welcome, Dan!

 

Oops! forgot the link -

http://tinyurl.com/mwplphw

 

Ricardo De Almeida

8 Years Ago

 

Gary Langley

8 Years Ago

I have watched birds fly in to tanks, huge gasoline tanks at a refinery 50 ft tall 100rds of feet around, they simply don't see them, I know that sounds crazy but I have witness them fly straight into them and break their necks, I once had a whole covey of Quail spook as I drove up and they all flew straight at the big white tank and thumped into it had 15 dead quail on the ground, a few of the trailing ones veered off when they seen the others go down, at first I thought maybe glare but I saw it happen with a meadowlark one day on the shady side of the tank, for what ever reason they just don't see them. So I suspect the same is true with the turbines. Yeah I know it sounds crazy.
I shared an office area with the guy that ran our local wind farm and he says he never found a dead bird around the 22 windmills that he supervised and we do have a few Bald Eagles here in the winter

 

MARTY SACCONE

8 Years Ago







 

Abbie Shores

8 Years Ago

It's called the vortex I think

 

Edward Fielding

8 Years Ago

No doubt the Koch brothers are funding the research into wind turbine bird deaths. Meanwhile how many people and animals die due to coal, coal ash and carbon pollution? Plus the lost of habitat when whole mountains are removed.

But of course, no needless death is good. We just started getting our raptors back after killing them off with DDT.

.....

Rich - the simple answer is birds of prey are looking down looking for food. They don't see the blade coming.

 

Rich Franco

8 Years Ago

Wendy, Very good. It seems that the birds actually don't "see" the tips of the blades.

Ken, I think I agree with your conclusion,

Dan, WTF! "Well...now there is! And adapt they will."??? You mean the last remaining birds?

Adam, yes, for song birds mostly, based on size of the birds.

CEA,. yes, we know that. This is about turbines and a possible solution!

Abbie, Yes, I've seen those and I think the video was this British guy no less!!!

RDA, Thanks for this in depth information!

Gary, the numbers are there.............

Marty, spoken like a true environmentalist, NOT!

Abbie, yes that was it, no blades, just a cylinder from what I remember from the video,

Edward, sorta a defeatist attitude. Either remove the threat or alert the birds. We are so far only dealing with sight,which leaves the other senses, right?

Rich



 

Edward Fielding

8 Years Ago

Here is a no blade one - http://www.wired.com/2015/05/future-wind-turbines-no-blades/

Spending more money on research like this makes more sense than subsidizing oil and coal.

 

Dan Turner

8 Years Ago

"Either remove the threat or alert the birds."

~ static ~ Eagle One, climb to 700 feet and maintain heading, over. ~ static ~

Like that? Or maybe we can fit them with little shock collars. Fly too close and Btzzzzzz!

Simple signage? "Eagles, Falcons, etc, Keep Out. This is a no-fly zone."

I say give the birds credit for millions of years of evolution. They'll figure it out.


Dan Turner
Dan Turner's Seven Keys to Selling Art Online

 

MARTY SACCONE

8 Years Ago







.

 

Murray Bloom

8 Years Ago

As I understand it, the birds simply don't see the blades coming. You have to remember that wind turbines are huge, much larger than they appear. The biggest ones trace a circle with a diameter that is 80% the length of a football field, and can spin at speeds approaching 200 miles per hour at the tip. There is nothing in birds' experience to prepare them for slice and dice technology on such a giant scale. They fly through what appears to be open space and are struck by the speeding blades, each of which can often be the height of a ten story building.

However, all carnage aside, I believe that Dan has got it right. The birds who perceive a threat will, through the laws of Darwinian natural selection, be the ones that survive, and will pass their fear and knowledge to their bird children; ultimately creating generations of birds that will avoid wind farms entirely, not to mention individual turbines.

It's sort of like with animals and automobiles. Most of them have no concept of something that moves as fast as a car, nor do they perceive that vehicles travel in predictable directions over predictable routes (roadways). Some eventually figure it out, and those who survive pass their knowledge to the next generation, and so forth. It's sort of the opposite of the squirrels that eat at the seed bowls I put out for local critters who come to dine on my deck. Some squirrels have learned that some humans are safe and, rather than killing and eating them, will offer them peanuts from our hands. They teach their squirrel kids that it's a good thing to approach us, smile cutely, and wait to be handed a treat.

 

David King

8 Years Ago

Murray, I would agree except for the fact that humankind is creating inadvertent new threats to animals at a far faster pace than natural evolution can adapt, and I often wonder if we are fooling ourselves into thinking we aren't outpacing our own ability to adapt.

 

Ken Krug

8 Years Ago

Airports have been in existence for decades.
They have not adapted.

 

Cristolin O

8 Years Ago

"I say give the birds credit for millions of years of evolution. They'll figure it out."

Millions of years vs. a few decades. There's a huge difference. Evolution is fast for bacteria with a generation time of hours or less. It's slow for species with generation times of years or decades, like birds.

The dodo didn't "figure it out". The many millions of passenger pigeons didn't "figure it out". Nor the ivory-billed woodpecker, the Carolina parakeet, more than half the native species of Guam and about one third the native species of Hawaii, and dozens of other bird species that have gone extinct in a very short time period (in evolutionary terms) because of human activities - habitat destruction, over-hunting, environmental toxins, introduced predators... Maybe wind turbines will be added to the list some day.

It's absurdly simplistic, not to mention down right wrong, to suggest that because birds as a class of vertebrates have evolved over millions of years that the rate of evolution will now speed up and all will be well - no need to be concerned about additional human-caused extinctions.

The extent to which we humans can exist in absolute denial of our responsibility for the extinction of other species never ceases to amaze me. Not to mention the extent of misunderstanding of freshman biology - and I've been a biologist for 35 years.

It's too early to know if the added mortality from wind turbines will indeed lead directly to any extinctions. But it certainly won't help the many species that are threatened already.

Some say it's the price we pay for technological advancement. Of course it's a price we're prepared to pay - because we're not the ones paying the ultimate price.

 

David King

8 Years Ago

That's interesting technology Ed, I like that it all but eliminates the maintenance, current wind turbines require an awful lot of it. Too bad it only puts out 30% of the power, even doubling them up still makes them only 60% the output of current designs, that fact will probably hold back their implementation somewhat.

 

Cristolin O

8 Years Ago

"birds aren't that bright though"

True of some species of birds. Completely wrong about others. Crows, jays, and relatives and parrots and relatives are remarkably intelligent. They exhibit intelligence that surpasses that of dogs - problem-solving, fashioning tools, learning complex behaviors, etc. That's not even including the ability of parrots to learn the meanings of dozens (even up to a hundred) words with an understanding of syntax.

Most species of birds have not been studied or assessed with regard to their intelligence, so at this point it's unknown how many other species may be as smart or smarter than the parrots and crows of the bird world.

Just like with other classes of vertebrates (e.g. mammals) there are bright species and not so bright species. Not really fair to paint them with the same broad brush.

 

Cristolin O

8 Years Ago

What David and Ken said.

 

Dan Turner

8 Years Ago

"It's slow for species with generation times of years or decades, like birds."

They're going to need to pick up the pace. They will. Watch.

As far as certain birds not adapting to airports, those may be candidates for the Darwin Awards. Every species has them.

Humans need to stop apologizing for being at the top of the food chain and start acting like it. This save-the-whales attitude is slowing down progress and ultimately puts us in jeopardy. We need to get off this planet. The longer we stay in the nest the more dangerous life becomes.


Dan Turner
Dan Turner's Seven Keys to Selling Art Online

 

Abbie Shores

8 Years Ago

Good post Cristolin! Completely agree.

 

Paul Cowan

8 Years Ago

First euthanise your cats, then blow up your cellphone masts and after that the wind turbine menace may start to make it on to the radar ....

http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2014/09/15/wind-turbines-kill-fewer-birds-than-cell-towers-cats/15683843/

 

Walter Holland

8 Years Ago

Abbie wrote, “They have now invented wind turbines with no blades”

Yep.

https://youtu.be/vDzLROvUakA

 

Walter Holland

8 Years Ago

This is a very interesting subject.

I contend that the term “bird brained” is often a misnomer.

 

Ricardo De Almeida

8 Years Ago



"A few hours before dawn on Dec. 22, 2008, the walls of a dam holding 1.1 billion gallons of coal ash crumbled, spilling the toxic concoction into the town of Kingston, Tenn., and creating the largest industrial spill in U.S. history. The wave of ash, leftovers from burning coal mixed with water, wiped out roads, crumpled docks and destroyed homes."

Read more: http://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/wilderness-resources/photos/americas-10-worst-man-made-environmental-disasters-0#ixzz3axj9K1Oo

 

Thomas Zimmerman

8 Years Ago

We've been hitting and killing birds for almost 100 years now with cars....nobody says a word.

Put up a wind turbine, whack a few birds....everyone loses their minds!

 

Gothicrow Images

8 Years Ago

Wind turbines, solar panels, communication masts, tall buildings, windows, power lines, fences, poisons, loss of habitat, artificial lighting and illuminated structures, oil, by eating man-made plastic, diseases, water deprivation, starvation, road deaths, hunters, agricultural mowing and forestry which alters their habitat during the breeding season destroying eggs, the list goes on and on. There are many more bird deaths due to man and his quest for power that the lowly cat could even come close to matching.

 

Edward Fielding

8 Years Ago

Of course no one wants to hear about the billions of song birds their cats kill each year.

http://www.npr.org/2013/01/29/170588511/killer-kitties-cats-kill-billions-every-year

but the issue with turbines seems to be the predator birds that fly higher and are looking down.

Now if Dan can just apply his theory of amazingly rapid evolution and migration to polar bears, island dwellers and even Jersey shore inhabitants. Maybe we should all do the most logical thing and live in the desert.

 

Gothicrow Images

8 Years Ago

Windows are the number one killer of birds.

http://www.sibleyguides.com/conservation/causes-of-bird-mortality/

Window strikes – estimated to kill 97 to 976 million birds/year – Millions of houses and buildings, with their billions of windows, pose a significant threat to birds. Birds see the natural habitat mirrored in the glass and fly directly into the window, causing injury and, in 50% or more of the cases, death.

If anyone was really concerned about birds they would be putting decals on their windows.

 

Rich Franco

8 Years Ago

Dan,Dan,Dan...........Really..........

Murray, You almost had me until the "Dan has it right".

Evolution is a rather slow process and hoping that some of these birds survive to "learn their lesson" is, well silly, is the only word I can use now and not get banned.

Cristolin, Yes, you've got it right and I agree. We shouldn't expect a species to learn a new trick/habit, at their expense. Asking "Evolution" to solve this problem,certainly isn't the answer. since that process can take hundreds or thousands of years to work.

Dan, I agree 100% "As far as certain birds not adapting to airports, those may be candidates for the Darwin Awards. Every species has them." And a few are posting here right now!

Tom, heart felt response.............

GDS, Yes, I'm certainly aware of the other man-made things we've invented that adversely effects nature, but I'd like to work on one issue at a time.

So my next question is that these birds getting killed by these turbines are doing so because they don't see them or that they don't realize the speed of the tips of the blades? What about doing something for another "sense", like hearing, some device on the tips of these blades that create a noise,preferably, that they can only hear? And at night, maybe a string of LED lights along the length of each or every other blade, which would create an object that would appear solid to the birds?

Rich

 

Greg Jackson

8 Years Ago

Now I'm wondering how many birds died when they were used to test for oxygen content in the coal (and other elements) mining efforts.

 

Cristolin O

8 Years Ago

"First euthanise your cats, then blow up your cellphone masts and after that the wind turbine menace may start to make it on to the radar .... "

Very good point - many other human activities kill more birds than wind turbines. I don't think anyone here is denying that, and in fact some have listed a longer list than that for the demise of many species of birds and the decline in populations of many more. This thread just happens to be about wind turbines.

The above statement also clearly refutes a statement made by another poster.

"They're going to need to pick up the pace (of evolution). They will. Watch."

Domestic cats have been around for a lot longer than wind turbines and yet large numbers of birds still fall prey to domestic cats. Power lines, coastal development, human trash, and lead shot were around for many decades and still the California condor "population" dropped to about 20 birds before intervention by humans in the form of captive breeding programs brought their numbers up to a few hundred. At one point there were NONE in the wild.

Why didn't this miraculously rapid evolution happen for them? Or any of the other many species of birds (and plants, and insects, and mammals, and amphibians, and fish...) that have gone extinct in the blink of an evolutionary eye?

Because evolution simply doesn't happen that fast for species with generation times like that of birds. My intro bio students know this. Crack open an introductory college biology textbook and learn a little about selective pressures, genetics, and natural history before spouting off things that are patently nonsense.

Perhaps Dan already knows these things and is just having trolling fun, in which case he got me. Or he really believes what he is saying, in which case he would be wise to document this rapid evolution because he would become a very famous scientist indeed.



 

Cristolin O

8 Years Ago

"Humans need to stop apologizing for being at the top of the food chain and start acting like it."

What does it mean to act like we are at the top of the food chain? To do whatever we want no matter the impact on other species? In that case, we are mostly doing just that. The efforts we make to restore or protect other species are few and feeble compared to the impact we have had in habitat destruction alone. And the number of species that we have tried to help is a tiny fraction of the millions on the planet.

"We need to get off this planet. The longer we stay in the nest the more dangerous life becomes. "

Yes! Life is becoming dangerous for all the longer we are on Earth.

But of course, if we do leave Earth, we have to make sure we find a place where there isn't someone else equally reckless as us at the top of the food chain, or we will suffer the same fate of the condor, and the passenger pigeon. Space explorers, take heed!

 

David Bridburg

8 Years Ago

There is still another design where the blades run up and down like an electric egg beater.
This design does not kill birds.

Dave

 

Cristolin O

8 Years Ago

"This save-the-whales attitude is slowing down progress and ultimately puts us in jeopardy."

Don't know that progress is all that slow. Have you noticed the difference in how people live now compared to say, in 1900? How much longer they live? How much less hard physical labor they do? How much public sanitation, water delivery, food delivery, and medical treatment have improved? How much more total wealth there is? Technological progress has been astonishingly fast.

The jeopardy we really face comes from: political strife, environmental degradation from over population/over exploitation of limited resources, leading to more political strife, and ultimately more wars. The battles over fresh water in my part of the country aren't about saving whales. They are between people - tribes, fishermen, ranchers, farmers, and outdoor recreation businesses. When those sorts of battles occur between countries, that's serious jeopardy.

I've been in the business of doing and teaching science long enough to know when there is a vanishingly small probability that data and logic will sway someone's deeply held world view, so this ends my responses to these types of comments in this thread.

 

Cristolin O

8 Years Ago

Abby and Rich - Yes, we seem to have the same perspective - I've noticed that it's not the first time I've agreed with things you've posted. Great minds...!

Ricardo - Very sad footage you posted, and very sobering. With increased demands for resources, scenes like these will likely increase. Just had another major oil pipeline leak (leak does not describe it well) off California coast for example.

Edward - "Now if Dan can just apply his theory of amazingly rapid evolution and migration to polar bears, island dwellers and even Jersey shore inhabitants. Maybe we should all do the most logical thing and live in the desert." Too funny ! : )

Gothicolors - Thanks for the long list of all the ways human actions impact wildlife - many of them are things that people don't think have much impact, but in combination the impact is substantial.

Walter - Thanks for posting the video - great example of tool use. Love those crows - amazing animals.

David - Good question you ask below.

 

David Bridburg

8 Years Ago

This save-the-whales attitude is slowing down progress and ultimately puts us in jeopardy.


Dan,

What is progress? Larger corporate profits?

Animals including man are all programmed to kill. We need to stop that. Or at least be concerned with that.

We are just too good at it.

Dave

 

Gothicrow Images

8 Years Ago

I read that seismologists say wind turbines produce airborne infra-sound plus vibration up to 6.8 miles from the wind farm and it makes me wonder how it affects the wildlife. Could that possibly be why we see many animals in the city that would have been a rarity is now becoming more of a normal occurrence? I also wonder why the noise doesn't deter the birds.

 

Murray Bloom

8 Years Ago

David, sharks are pretty good at killing, too.

Donna, I imagine that birds aren't attuned to infrasound. It is likely beyond their hearing spectrum. Animals in the city has to do with loss of habitat and climate issues, such as recent lack of rain in CA.

 
 

Rich Franco

8 Years Ago

Nobody has any suggestions?

"What about doing something for another "sense", like hearing, some device on the tips of these blades that create a noise,preferably, that they can only hear? And at night, maybe a string of LED lights along the length of each or every other blade, which would create an object that would appear solid to the birds?"

For those that haven't traveled out West, there is a small device that you attach to the front bumper of the car/truck and at a certain speed, it begins to "whistle" a sound we can't hear, but Deer, Elk and Moose can and will leave the road and stay in the bushes, until that "threat" passes. Not sure how well this works, but I would assume, there are specific sounds that might deter birds from flying to close to that sound.

So a visual and sonic device might help reduce these bird deaths, that we've created. I read somewhere recently, there are now permits for another 50,000 wind turbines to be installed in the next few years, here and I think they all are this design and that's why I started this thread.

And as far as efficiency, to me not an issue if the "safe" turbines are less, but actually reduce those injuries and deaths. Just build more,

Rich

 

Greg Jackson

8 Years Ago

I know people who had those devices mounted on their truck/vehicle bumpers, and they still hit deer. Lots ofdeer hits around here, and tgere have been times that I've driven down the road at night and seen deer standing by the roadside and they watch you as you drive by, and at other times they'll bolt right out into the road. I have none if those devices mounted on my truck, and think it's just the luck of the draw if they run and get hit, or they stand and watch you. Or......they're hard of hearing.

 

Rich Franco

8 Years Ago

Greg,

Never had the on anything I've owned,since I'm in Florida and not an issue, but have friends out West, Wyoming, and they swear by them. It's been years now, so don't know if things have changed.

But my point was maybe there is a audible range that the birds hear and consider that sound a danger and would stay away from the noise. And i think having a strip of LED lights on the edge of each blade would help too, at night. Especially the tips, which would create a "ring" of light.......

Rich

 

Gregory Scott

8 Years Ago

A turbine blade does not need to actually strike a bird (or a bat) to kill it. The pressure differential can lethal without actual contact. As far as modified designs for bladeless wind generators, one wonders what the actual effects would be in full production models. The reporting (on both sides) of these issues is notoriously premature and biased. Wind turbines can be particularly bad for raptors, since the best locations tend to be along ridges used for soaring routes along migratory paths. Steady reliable winds are used by birds for migration, too. And they were here first. If deployed on a truly large scale, one wonders at the climate change that might be induced by damping the circulatory winds in the earth's weather patterns. Nothing is free, everything has a cost. Alternative energy can be particularly expensive, environmentally and financially, because you have to have backup systems in place to store the energy when the alternate energy source is not working. So you have to pay for 2 or even three systems, instead of just one (petrochemical). These problems can be mitigated, but the solutions are not as easy or complete as we might tend to think.

Tidal power generators might likewise be very disruptive to ocean shore ecology. Desert ecology is very fragile, and would be affected by the use of solar power on a scale sufficient to replace petrochemicals. Nothing is free, everything has a cost to offset the potential benefit.

 

This discussion is closed.