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Bird deaths down 70 percent after painting wind turbine blades:
Something as simple as black paint could be the key to reducing the number of birds that are killed each year by wind turbines. According to a study conducted at a wind farm on the Norwegian archipelago of Smøla, changing the color of a single blade on a turbine from white to black resulted in a 70-percent drop in the number of bird deaths.
Not everyone is a fan of wind turbines, however, because of their impact on local populations of flying fauna like birds and bats.
[...] Previous laboratory studies have suggested that birds may not be very good at seeing obstructions while they're flying, and adding visual cues like different colored fan blades can increase birds' chances of spotting a rapidly rotating fan.
[...] And so, in 2013, each of the four turbines in the test group had a single blade painted black. In the three years that followed, only six birds were found dead due to striking their turbine blades. By comparison, 18 bird deaths were recorded by the four control wind turbines—a 71.9-percent reduction in the annual fatality rate.
Digging into the data a little more showed some variation on bird deaths depending upon the season. During spring and autumn, fewer bird deaths were recorded at the painted turbines. But in summer, bird deaths actually increased at the painted turbines, and the authors note that the small number of turbines in the study and its relatively short duration both merit longer-term replication studies, both at Smøla and elsewhere.
Journal Reference:
Roel May, Torgeir Nygård, Ulla Falkdalen, et al. Paint it black: Efficacy of increased wind turbine rotor blade visibility to reduce avian fatalities [open], Ecology and Evolution (DOI: 10.1002/ece3.6592)
(Score: 5, Insightful) by nostyle on Thursday August 27 2020, @03:26PM (10 children)
About once every five years a bird will fly into the window glass of my house, break its neck and die. There are about 125 million houses in the USA, so, extrapolating, there are probably 25 million birds that die every year from flying into window glass.
We need to outlaw window glass in houses before all the birds in the world are wiped out.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 27 2020, @03:29PM
> outlaw window glass in houses
Less extreme suggestion -- put some stickers / dots on your windows. I believe these are sold for just this purpose.
(Score: 2) by acid andy on Thursday August 27 2020, @03:33PM (2 children)
Or you could just hang some things in your window (a vertical blind can work) so they're less likely to think it's empty space they can just fly straight through.
If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 27 2020, @08:21PM (1 child)
Hang cats in your windows.
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Thursday August 27 2020, @11:10PM
Oh right! The ASPCA will love that!
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Thexalon on Thursday August 27 2020, @05:18PM (1 child)
What's a much bigger problem for bird than houses are the tinted glass windows of office buildings. Those are extremely reflective surfaces even on fairly dark days, which means that somewhere between 400 million and 1 billion birds slam into them every year. Your 2-story in the suburbs presents far less of a problem than your nearest city's 50-story glass box skyscraper.
And that adds to the point that any belief that bird deaths are a good reason to hate wind power is basically BS.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by acid andy on Thursday August 27 2020, @06:13PM
But a great reason to hate office blocks and corporate culture ;)
If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Thursday August 27 2020, @11:20PM (2 children)
There was a very stupid Cardinal that kept hitting his own reflection on the in-law's front windows. He'd just keep doing it, for a goodly while. Maybe, he was defective, maybe he was protecting his territory from the other guy, beats me, but as far as I know he didn't die.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 28 2020, @05:23AM (1 child)
I'm guessing "Cardinal" is a breed of bird. My initial read of your post did bring a funny image to mind which featured another kind of cardinal.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 29 2020, @04:36PM
Yes, the cardinal is a type of bird, named such because the males are distinctively bright red.
(Score: 1) by fakefuck39 on Saturday August 29 2020, @12:12AM
No one is outlawing wind turbines. Are you telling me that if you could have a window that's functionally the same, you would still opt to have a bird break it every 5 years?
You're painting the turbine anywise. Use a different color. An no, black won't make it last less. Whatever damage is done by the heat which is immediately dissipated by the wind, it's less damage than the impact the blade takes hitting a bird.
White is used simply because it's the cheapest paint right now. Ford used black paint because it was the cheapest paint back then. But when you have this million dollar turbine, $10 more for paint on does not raise its price.
When you have a field of 50 turbines, in a fairly small area, you're going to have like 100 dead birds a year. and after 20 years (the lifespan of a turbine), you'll have a nasty smelly 2000-bird decomposing cesspool of rotting flesh, insects, and bird carcasses covering the whole area. And it seems you can avoid all that by choosing a different paint color, without doing any extra work.
But you enjoy your broken window.