Sunday, April 24, 2011

Joven Vencejo Común cortado en dos (Young Swift cut in two)

The next time someone tells you that wind turbines are no danger to wildlife, show them this, one amongst many examples of young Swifts being killed by wind turbines in  Aragon, Spain.

A finales de julio de 2003 comenzaron a aparecer cadáveres de Vencejo Común (Apus apus) accidentados en los parques eólicos de Aragón. Este ejemplar joven fue hallado en un parque del complejo eólico de La Muela (Zaragoza) y esta seccionado en dos mitades. Las causas de este aumento de la mortalidad se deben a la gran cantidad de vencejos jóvenes e inexpertos aún en el vuelo que llenan los cielos en estas fechas.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Seems bats are suffering knockdown even more extensive than that seen in birds. I saw recent estimates predicting widespread extinctions of otherwise un-threatened populations in the next five to ten years.

HGJones said...

Me again, I find it quite hard to believe that a Swift, a bird so amazing agile that it can catch flying insects, or a Bat that can do the same thing at night, could fall prey to a wind turbine blade which is moving relatively slowly. The smaller, domestic type of wind Generator with rapidly rotating blades may-be but the larger "Wind Farm" type, I doubt. plus the numbers killed compared to those lost to Cars, domestic and feral cats, Corvids. Personally I think this is all a ploy invented by people who are generally against wind-farms, not that long since there was an outcry about the number of electricity pylons littering the countryside. Nobody even notices pylons nowadays. Maybe I'm wrong, but a s my mother used to say "Everybody is entitled to MY opinions"

Jake Allsop said...

I believe it's something to do with being sucked into an updraught (or downdraught), similar to the way Barn Owls are sucked into the tailstream of juggernauts and then clobbered by the following vehicle. But if it's just a fiction to bad-mouth wind turbines, well, you know I never let the facts get in the way of a perfectly good prejudice!