Part of a much larger migrating flock of many hundreds of White Storks, Ciconia ciconia, passing through a wind farm in the extreme south of Andalucía in southern Spain.
One of the surprisingly few obvious changes to that area since I was there almost thirty years ago is the proliferation of wind farms, which now supply 18% of Andalucía’s energy. After trialling various largely unsuccessful mitigation methods, Fundación Migres worked with the wind farm companies.
Now each large block has a Migres-trained ornithologist who watches for storks and raptors, stops the wind turbines, from a very few in a block to a large area, lets the birds pass through, then starts up them again when the birds have left the danger zone. It takes less than a minute to start or stop the turbines and the process is operated via a phone app.
