Wind turbine kills rare bird

Yeah but, a rare visitor is a "lost" bird and is almost certainly doomed anyway. At least this way, someone has a specimen to take to the taxidermist. ;-)

Tim

Oh, look: watch me give a f*ck.

There are cheaper ways of killing rare birds than building useless windmills all over the place!

Meh, but it some what puts the greenies with their "windmills don't kill birds" statements a bit on the spot.

I imagine Harris looks much like Siberia so it probably felt quite at home

Well, a kit anyway.

So is the reason this is rare due to it having bad eyesight perhaps?

Brian

Yes, big nets put up in Italy for example. Brian

If one is talking about killing birds, there seem to be many killed on a daily basis, birds that is, and nobody actually checks if they are rare or not, by aircraft taking off and landing in our airports. I often hear the runway checkers going onto the runways to collect dead birds so it does make you wonder about birds who surely must witness such things and seemingly do not connect the dots that airports are not good places to roost and nest. The same can be said for wind turbines of cours, and they don't move far.. Brian

I s*it you not, some bird that hasn't been seen in the UK for 22 odd years,

No surprise. It probably wasn't there when it last visited 22 years ago...

Mike

Some years ago the Scottish Government did some calculations of the risk of goose-mincing from wind turbines - how likely was it that a bird would get hit if it flew through (swept area, revs, size of blades). The answer was very small. The evidence bore this out - there are not piles of carcases at the foot of turbines. Sounds like this rare bird was either daft, deranged or doomed.

actually, there are. Not massive piles, but a good sprinkling.

The chances are not random. Airflow round the blades attracts soarers, and the wake turbulence can suck them in.

But.... but....

?It is tragic. More than 80 people had already arrived on the island and others were coming from all over the country. But it just flew into the turbine. It was killed instantly.

?The corpse will be sent to a museum but obviously this is just terrible. Some people will have lost the cost of their flights"

Rare because it needed another 10mins in the oven.

mark

Indeed - and it was "rare" not (AFAICS) "endangered", so really not a big deal in the greater scheme of things

Bwahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha[gasp]hahahahahahahahahahahahahaha

Fwiw, whirlygigs are great things in the right places and the Isle of Harris is one of them. I've never claimed birds don't fly into them - on the contrary, birds do, but I really couldn't give a f*ck about them. The number of stupid birds totalled by whirlygigs is miniscule. I'd like to tie TNP to one of them, though.

"Behaviour likely to cause a breach of the peace" m'lud.

Isle of Harris would have dine better with an undersea cable, and a stack of propane bottles.

Unless you go search a largeish (100m or so) radius from each turbine stalk at least once a day you won't get any where near an accurate corpse count. Scavengers will make off with them, and nature is pretty damn quick in reducing a corpse to bones and feathers. Around a week in summer.

Unlucky. Wrong place, at the wrong time.