Overheard a guy at the feed store say wind turbines are killing all the birds and it got me thinking

I was grabbing some fencing supplies in rural Iowa and this farmer was going off about how a wind farm 10 miles away was wiping out eagles and hawks. He claimed he saw 30 dead birds in one month under a single turbine. That number felt high so I looked it up later and the average is like 5 to 10 bird deaths per turbine per year depending on location. But cats and building windows kill way more birds every year by a huge margin. So why do wind farms get all the blame in these conversations? Has anyone else run into these kinds of exaggerated claims in their area?

3 comments

3 Comments

ericcraig1d ago

I read a study from the US Fish and Wildlife Service that said house cats probably kill over 2 billion birds every year in the US alone. Building windows are up there too around a billion. So when you compare that to maybe 500,000 bird deaths from all US wind turbines in a year, the difference is huge. @brooke_jones is right that 30 dead birds in a month sounds like someone was just guessing or saw a bad spot and figured it was the norm everywhere.

brooke_jones1d ago

Thirty dead birds in one month? That's wild, I mean even for a worst case scenario that sounds way off from what I've read.

williamw751d ago

Remembered reading something from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology a few years back, they did a big citizen science thing where people tracked what they saw in their yards... even the most active hawks in urban areas only averaged like one bird a week. So 30 dead birds in a month would be like a whole flock hitting one spot daily, which makes no sense unless someone is counting every sick or old bird that naturally dies in the area. @brooke_jones definitely has the right idea, that number feels more like a rumor that got passed around without anyone checking the math. I've got a buddy who works at a wildlife rehab center and he says they barely see any birds brought in from wind turbine collisions, way more from cat attacks and window strikes. People hear one scary story and think it's the norm everywhere.