Did I kill the birds?

Some birds nesting at a tiny island where I had a break during a windsurfing session triggered my curiosity for this post.

It’s May 2. I have a week off. Two months of intense work is over. The Ukraine war is ongoing. After16 hours workdays as information analyst for the Red Cross I need a break from numbers, images, military analysis, humanitarian needs reports, lies, threats and stories of massive human suffering and losses.

I drive down to the club at ten, get my gear and head south to Hvaler. The forecast says 9-11 m/s. Sunny. 12 degrees celsius. Should be good conditions with my 7.8 square meter sail and 114 liters racing board. Two and a half hours later I am on the water. The west south-west wind makes an almost direct course towards the Koster islands in Sweden.

After thirty minutes, I pass the Tisler reef. It’s 1,200 meters long and the largest known cold water, close-to-shore coral reef in the world.

Tisler

I decide to go ashore on Tisler, a tiny island some twenty minutes of sailing before you enter Swedish waters further south. Good to have a break, a hike in my wet suit and to feel the wind and look at the eternal ocean from a hill.

Now, if I had been a little more conscious about what time of year it is I may have chosen not to climb that hill. On my way up there, I pass not only one but three different bird nests. I don’t see them since I am all focused on the view. Unfortunately, I frighten them, leaving behind 5-6 eggs in each nest. On my way back I make sure to go down the hill and back along the water.

Damn. I know mother birds that leave their nests may not return. And there were dozens of seagulls flying around ready to take the opportunity. I can only hope the mothers returned.

But this incident got me thinking, which is related to what I do for a living. You care for what is close to you, what you see and what you know. The past two months of work with the Ukraine war was certainly useful for the effectiveness of the relief operation, but during that time I had to picture the real suffering behind the numbers. And doing so, I drew on previous direct relief experiences from Haiti, Niger, Colombia and Cuba.

Which brings me to the next reflection. The renewable energy transition is going to take its toll on the natural world. We know it, but most of it will be out of sight. Like wind turbines.

With the fresh image of the mother birds in my head, I get home and start reading.

Birds are killed by wind turbines – but how many?

Joel Merriman at American Bird Conservancy writes that “A Google search can turn up a wide array of answers to this question, with a nearly fivefold difference between the smallest and largest estimates. The truth is, it has been a while since these estimates were updated, and the wind energy industry has grown a lot in the meantime. So, we thought it was time to take a close look at the numbers, and see what a current estimate might look like.”

Merriman compares different studies and looks at the projected mortality based on the number of turbines combined with energy produced. The latter because it accounts for the size of the turbines. He concludes that 1.17 million birds are killed by wind turbines in the United States each year. We should add to this, he argues, that 25.5 million birds are killed each year due to collisions with powerlines, and another 5.6 million are killed by electrocutions.

This is a lot I think. But then I read how many birds are killed beyond wind turbines: Communication towers (5–6.8 million), automobiles (60-80 million), pesticides (67-90) and cats (365 million to 1 billion) in the US every year.

Put in perspective, the bird population in the United States and Canada was probably around 10.1 billion nearly half a century ago and has fallen 29% to about 7.2 billion birds today. The issue is obviously huge and complex and definitely related to the climate crisis, so I return to wind turbines. Any solutions?

Black

According to a study from Norwegian Institute for Nature Research (NINA) in Trondheim, experiments have indicated that painting one of three rotor blades black minimizes motion smear. One black rotor may help birds to see when the rotors move fast, rather than just a blurry object. Scientists aren’t fully convinced yet that this actually helps but it’s promising. Detailed studies of where to put the wind turbines may be equally important.

I was actually looking for how noise from wind turbines can scare birds nesting, but ended up with this. Actually, noise is one of the possible solutions to keep birds from colliding, I find, which will be for another post.