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Out for a walk and went through a local windfarm and it got me wondering about bird strikes. Saw something a few days back about painting 1 blade black would reduce bird strikes by a fair margin. As I walked by the turbines I was wondering where the birds end up that do get unlucky.
The blade part that would do the striking is pretty blind as it is rounded (although at speed I suspect that is irrelevant).
Do the birds just fall immediately below the structure or do they get batted off into the distance?
Slightly morbid question but I've been pondering it for a bit and can't work it out myself as I've never seen any birds need the structures - nesting, flying or looking for food and not seen any dead birds either.
Cover drive into next field and then picked off by scavengers..
Bird strike is incredibly rare, especially compared to the millions that hit non moving buildings or the billions killed by cats. It's a complete red herring. I doubt you'd ever see anything unless you spent a considerable amount of time looking
In Tarifa (where the largest concentration of wind turbines in Europe coincides with the main migration path across the Med for birds) I think the vultures and eagles pick them up and eat them.
Tip speed of a wind turbine is 80 m/s and upwards. Therefore, it does not really matter how sharp the leading edge is. It will sting if it hits you on the back of your neck. However, i suspect that the frequency of bird strikes is overstated as most birds see or hear a massive grey/white thing in front of them. The exception is when raptors are pouncing on prey and their sight is focused on that to the exclusion of all else.
I once found a hawk on top of a nacelle (the machine house) but that was in the US. I am aware of some (a few in many years) being found on UK sites close to the culprit turbine.
Let Donald inform you. A rather spectacular rant even from him. He talks about birds and windfarms at around one minute.
Alot of bird strike data came from if i recall an American windfarm atop a sea cliff the birds would pop up above the brow and get blown into a field of spinny choppy things.
Findus lasagne would be my best guess, defo after Jan 1st when brexit makes it harder to get good horse 👍
They are dumped on grouse moors to give grouse moors a bad name!
73 kittiwake deaths a year. Oh, the horror...
When I was at school we went on a trip to Delabole wind farm, apart from how tall the turbines looked when inside the base and looking up, the part that I remember most is the dead birds. Not a massacre but more than you would see walking through a field without turbines. This may have been because they were new and the birds had not got used to them. It was almost 30 years ago - I think the corpses were starlings.
I read BBC article which I now can’t find that said the issue is not the large commercial turbines as they are easy to avoid for flying birds, it’s the smaller domestic units with smaller faster blades which leave a bit of a mess when bigger birds are hit.
“Hornsea Three could provide clean power to over two million UK homes and offset over 128.2 million tonnes of carbon dioxide over its lifetime.”
vs the projected 73 bird deaths (European population 2-2.5 million pairs, from https://app.bto.org/birdfacts/results/bob6020.htm )
Also,
The RSPB’s Andrew Dodd told BBC News: “We have no idea whether this plan will work or not. We don’t know how many birds are being killed in the first place and we certainly don’t know how many of them may be encouraged by breeding towers.”
So they admit they don't have any firm data. What are they basing their "computer modelling" on?
He said kittiwakes had been struggling for three decades – partly because climate change is altering fish patterns
So climate change is seen as being a negative for these birds (along with overfishing)... so they are objecting to something that should help reduce carbon emissions.
I'm confused. Of course, it could be a badly written article that is misrepresenting their postion.
When I was at school we went on a trip to Delabole wind farm, apart from how tall the turbines looked when inside the base and looking up, the part that I remember most is the dead birds. Not a massacre but more than you would see walking through a field without turbines. This may have been because they were new and the birds had not got used to them. It was almost 30 years ago – I think the corpses were starlings.
Guarantee you I see more dead birds and other carcasses walking railways though.
Reminded me of this;
https://www.scotsman.com/news/weather/birdwatchers-see-rare-bird-killed-wind-turbine-1569849
I seem to recall some twitchers had driven something like 14 hours to see it.
Guarantee you I see more dead birds and other carcasses walking railways though.
I can believe that, in our last house we had a main line behind our garden which birds and squirrels would get batted into almost daily.
I wasn’t making out there was definite link just a related anecdote
Edit: quote box won’t work!
Pros and Cons. A twitcher chum told me that numbers of migratory songbirds in the south east of England has gone up, the best guess is that the offshore wind turbines off Suffolk and Belgium have given the wee fellas somewhere to rest up on the North Sea crossing.
where do the birds end up
They end up in the hand. Which is beneficial as thats worth two in a bush. You are then accurately and easily able to kill it with a stone knowing that the stone will still have capacity to kill at least one more bird (theres a couple in the bush if you go and look). This is helpful as while birds are plentiful stones, which still have bird-killing capacity, are an un-renewable resource. Some experts believe we may already have passed 'peak stone'.
(while I was typing that a Dunnock ricocheted off my living room window)
^(and as I finished typing that another one did)^
Guarantee you I see more dead birds and other carcasses walking railways though.
Years ago I was in Adelaide with the GF getting on a small commuter train that had a small half cab at the front for the driver meaning you had a clear view of the tracks in front.
Train stops at station. Blows its horn when departing to warm the flock of pigeons. Everyone looks out front to see what the horn was for. Pigeons are slow to react. Thud thud thud thud thud thud thud thud. The windscreen is covered in blood and guts. The wipers are overwhelmed. Kids are screaming and crying.
When we got off there were at least a dozen birds piled up on the foot plate.
Was hilarious.
I thought the bird strike thing was just propaganda from the fossil fuel industry to try and discredit wind farms.
Guarantee you I see more dead birds and other carcasses walking railways though.
During the two years I spent on the nation’s highways and byways as a logistics driver, I saw a heck of a lot of dead birds, particularly the M5 and A30/303, mostly in the central reservation. And mostly pheasants, which tends to back up my belief that they are possibly the most stupid bird in the U.K.
I did see a couple of buzzards, and a few others, but pheasants were by far the largest number, probably because they stay fairly low after takeoff, which puts them at around grill/screen height, depending on size of vehicle. I once had one come across a hedge at head height when I was doing over 30mph on my bike! Close enough I could have grabbed it’s tail, if I’d been prepared to take a hand off the bars at that speed...
It’s scary enough when a pheasant goes across your screen close enough you can see the feathers twisting in its slipstream and you’re doing at least 60mph, but at eye level on a bike at 30+...
mostly pheasants, which tends to back up my belief that they are possibly the most stupid bird in the U.K.
You are correct but I personally don’t think it’s the pheasants fault. Millions of them are bread in captivity and then released en-mass in the autumn. And they literally have no clue** and will wander anywhere and everywhere in to the path of danger.
If they were free-born and raised I would assume that the doting parent pheasants would show them the ropes.
**Many years ago I was competing in a rally in N Yorkshire. I think one particular stage was in Cropton Forest and pheasants had recently been released and were being slaughtered by the rally cars, and more were coming out of the ferns and just adding to the grim mush. We were seeded in the top-10 and even at that point, you exited a square corner and accelerated up through 200m of pheasant mince. Can’t imagine what it would have been like after eighty/ninety cars.
Won’t forget it.
Fairly irresponsible of the shoot but I assume they’ll just count them up and claim compensation from the rally.
Saw something a few days back about painting 1 blade black would reduce bird strikes by a fair margin.
Reduce it from what to what?
How many birds get killed by turbines on say an annual basis? Could be an absolute shitload, could be none at all, could be anywhere in between. But that's the first question you need an answer to.
Fairly irresponsible of the shoot
What do you expect "the shoot" was planning on doing to them? Adopting them as house pets?