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The Myth That Wind Farms Are a Guillotine for Birds Is Being Debunked by Hard Data
(www.zmescience.com)
It was never a myth. It was a lie.
this post was submitted on 07 Mar 2026
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Reading the article. Wind turbines do kill birds, but it's worse in certain areas, at certain times of year, and even certain times of day.
We can plan around these known quantities.
Also, guy wires and power lines can kill birds. Not quite as often, but sometimes a bird will hit the wire rather than land on it.
But the main killer of birds by far is furry and has cute little claws.
And windows. Kills loads of birds.
Yet another reason to switch to Linux.
Anyone can drive out to a windfarm and look for dead birds, there never were any.
Also, wind turbines are geared to spin slowly, it's not like a room fan, they only turn at 10-20 rpm.
Anyone can also visit a glass office building and ask caretakers how many birds a day they clean up.
I'm not saying wind turbines kill a lot if birds, but that 20 RPM can translate to blade tip speeds well over 100MPH because of how long they are.
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Our house is older and is fairly light on windows, but the living room and kitchen both have a fairly sizeable one. I usually have to pick up 3-4 dead birds under them each year.
Put a sticker on them?
The stickers don’t actually work super well unless you cover your windows with them.
According to the Audubon society:
Window decals may help, but they must be placed no more than 2-4 inches apart in order to be effective. Birds will try to fly through larger gaps. This means that on large windows, many closely spaced decals may be necessary to deter bird collisions.
4 inches is about 10cm
There are more tips in the article but stickers don’t help nearly as much as people want them to.
There are companies that are experimenting with whole window films, but when I looked a bit ago they didn’t seem to be widely available to consumers.
Doesn't work. Just makes people feel better.
You should read the article fr. It says that wind turbines can and do kill birds, but that they are now designed and placed judiciously to reduce death toll. And that there are much greater threats, namely climate change which wind turbines helps with.
I work for a renewable energy company. We regularly find dead birds at our wind sites, including occasionally protected species like eagles (killing bats is also a concern).
There are steps you can take to mitigate the threat. We have dumped a ton of money into a really cool technology that scans the skies constantly with super high res cameras and automatically stops turbines in the vicinity of protected species.
Overall, renewable energy is still much better for wildlife than burning fossil fuels.
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Before anyone starts shouting windturbines don't kill birds because they saw this headline without reading the article, he is the key takeaway:
It turns out that while wind turbines do kill birds, they are statistically insignificant compared to the bigger killers we have in our cities and in our bedrooms.
Aside from the number being insignificant, there are efforts being made to minimize the amount of animals dying. The main solution is what is called bird curtailment - shutting the windmill off during migration activity.
Here is an article if you want to know more: https://appliedecologistsblog.com/2024/05/30/a-safe-passage-protecting-migratory-birds-in-the-north-sea/
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My favorite part is that people who are against wind farms pretend to care about animals
just like they pretend to not molest children. there's a pattern.
Good level headed article. Doesn't pretend wind turbines don't kill birds, but relativizes with the true killers: cats, windows and climate change (from which wind turbines are a remedy).
Yes, and well written too. It was easy to read, and not too long.
Came here to make some smart-ass comment, but the article already says it all. One additional thing I've read though is that rat poison (used by farmers) is also a major killer for birds-of-prey. But it may be a local problem.
A while back, I found myself driving across South Dakota, where there are plenty of fields of wind turbines.
There was one about 20 ~~years~~ yards from the road, with a paved driveway leading to it. Curious about all of Trump's allegations, I decided to check it out, and I pulled up next to the turbine.
First of all, his claim that they make lots of noise is a LIE. They make almost no noise at all. There was a quiet, regular mechanical thump, every few seconds or so, but it wasn't loud, and it couldn't be heard from the road.
Secondly, there wasn't one dead bird in the vicinity, despite there being MANY turbines operating in close proximity. If turbines were so deadly to birds, there should be a lot of them around this area, or at least a few, or at least ONE. But there were none.
Its almost like Trump either had no idea was he was saying, or he was just lying. Or both. Based on past experience, I'm going with BOTH.
Trump was talking, so of course he was lying.
As article says (and IIRC from other sources) it's the offshore turbines that pose the most risk to birds, and mostly to gliding fishing birds (bald eagle, osprey) because they barely see in front of them (they are looking down) and do not expect obstacles on open water.
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I have heard some old ones make a good bit of noise, but those things are from like the Nixon era so I have no clue if they've always been loud. Regardless if Trump opens his insipid mouth then he is lying.
20 years from the road
When your measuring distance in years, it's too far to drive
Got it, edited.
It was a fun thought. Assuming a speed of 60 miles per hour, one car-year would be 525,600 ~~minutes~~ ~~seasons of love~~ miles
Almost like birds have eyes and a brain
Local ones with eyes and brains do hit my very dirty window sometimes. Natural selection I suppose.
Dude, if hard data mattered to the maga cult, Trump would never have gotten elected in the first place.
Wait, birds that are quick, nimble, agile and through evolution are designed to feel the tiny differences in air flow aren't actually being cut in half by the huge and relatively very slow wind turbines?
IMPOSSIBLE. LIES!!
It always sounded so ridiculously unlikely, and that I’ve only heard people who definitely is just grasping for arguments never helped either.
Good that there is some actual data on it now
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If Trump is really concerned about birds, he should ban domesticated cats.
People saying this is some kind of hoax have not done their research. As someone who works for a renewable energy company they do hit birds (and bats, which are attracted to their low-frequency hum). I thought it was kind of nonsense before this job, but up close you realize those blades are spinning FAST. Theres nothing like them in the animal kingdom so birds arent afraid of them. There are steps you can take to mitigate the threat, but it is a valid concern. On the whole, though, they are still much better for the environment than pretty much any other type of energy generation.
Did you read the article? It contains numbers for the amounts of birds killed by turbines. To be clear: the article does not say no birds are killed. The number just is not very relevant as compared to other dangers, such as buildings, power lines and, most importantly, cats. 4,000 birds are killed by pet cats for every bird killed by a turbine.
Yeah people in the comments are talking about wind turbines killing birds being a hoax though. It definitely isn't.
Another important distinction is that wind turbines disproportionately kill raptors like eagles, which are not threatened by cats.
Thanks for this debunk!
Good article.
It always sound stupid,, especially because birds aren't that stupid
It hasn't got anything to do with brain but with vision, we make these things light grey so they blend with the white sky. Just like birds have trouble seeing glass, another thing we made to be as invisible as possible.
Birds can see more colors than us, at least the majority of them, we have 3 types of photoreceptor: red, green and blue, but they also have a 4th one that allow to see ultraviolet light; that means that bird see a wider range of colors than humans so i strongly doubt that they can't distinguish between light grey and white
The sky is never pure white, and i'm not saying all birds will fly into them if the sky and the windmill are a perfect match. But at the same time, if it were a bright colour less birds would fly into it. Collisions will still happen. It also has to do with the blades rotating, but also that is easier to calculate when the blades are very visible. Still the best thing is to do turn them off sometimes. Best case scenario would be that you can switch over to a source that is also renewable.
It will still kill less birds than coal and oil, and again they will still distinguish it even if it's the ssme color of the sky, very few birds will collide with it;
I DO NOT know if this image tells the truth, i don't have enough time to do a real research just for a lemmy comment so just search it up if you have more time than me
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