Estimating mortality of small passerine birds colliding with wind turbines

Abstract

As demand for renewable energy is rising, wind power development is rapidly growing worldwide. In its wake, conflicts arise over land use changes converting pristine nature into industrial power plants and its associated adverse biodiversity effects, crowned by one of the most obvious and deadly consequences: bird collisions. Most post-construction studies report low levels of avian mortality, but the majority of these studies are conducted primarily on larger birds. However, the diversity and abundance of small passerine birds are rarely reflected in the carcass surveys, although they in numeric proportion to their abundances should be the most numerous. The assumption that surveys find all carcasses seems thus rarely fulfilled and passerine mortality is likely to be grossly underestimated. We therefore designed an experiment with dummy birds to estimate mortality of small-bodied passerines and other small-bodied birds during post-construction surveys, tested in a medium-sized wind farm in western Norway. The wind farm was surveyed weekly during the migration periods by carcass survey teams using trained dogs to find killed birds. The dogs in the carcass surveys were more successful in locating the large than the small dummy birds (60-200 g), where they found 74% of the large dummy birds. Detecting the smaller category (5-24 g) was more demanding and the dogs only found 17% of the small dummy birds. Correcting the post-construction carcass survey outcome with the results from the experiment leads to an almost fourfold increase in estimated mortality rates, largely due to the low detection rate of the smallest category. The detection rates will naturally vary between wind farms, depending on the specific habitat characteristics, the efficiency of the carcass surveys and the search intervals. Thus, implementing a simple experiment with dummy birds to future post-construction surveys will produce more accurate estimates of the wind turbine mortality rates, and thus improve our understanding of the biodiversity effects of conforming to a more sustainable future.

Figure 1

Observed probability of locating a dummy bird on the carcass surveys N days after they were placed under the turbines at Guleslettene Wind Farm. The datapoints are aggregated for the whole season. Black = large dummy birds, grey = small dummy birds.

Figure 2

The proportion of all dead birds found, based on data from Guleslettene Wind Farm and a simulation with different search intervals. The proportion of birds found drops as time progress, as the likelihood of finding each individual approach zero. Black = large dummy birds, grey = small dummy birds.

Figure 3

Map over the Wind farm at Guleslettene, in western Norway.