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Cats and window collisions do kill way more birds than wind turbines, but they are largely birds that are abundant. Wind turbines are often built in places whe

by tzs 3y ago

Cats and window collisions do kill way more birds than wind turbines, but they are largely birds that are abundant. Wind turbines are often built in places where much less abundant birds, such as eagles and various other raptors, hunt. Wind turbines are particularly treacherous to those birds because they have a ridge over their eyes that blocks forward and upward vision (to keep the sun out of their eyes) when they are looking down to spot prey, so even though they have remarkable vision (hence the phrase "Eagle eyed") they can fly right into a turbine in broad daylight.

pydry 3y ago
With cats, vehicles and buildings it's something like 100 million annually while wind turbines it's like 100-400k. So, not just way more but 200-500x more. With eagles the numbers killed are in order of hundreds. Newer wind turbine designs also reduce the number of bird deaths considerably. The scale of the problem is clearly small, relatively speaking. It would be ignored under normal circumstances, just like the #1 and #2 deaths for eagles currently are, but the carbon industries gave this story some great PR.