A Vattenfall-funded research programme into seabird flights around offshore wind farms has revealed behaviour that could “speed up the consenting process” for new projects by revealing that seabirds will avoid the sites.
The €3m study used radar and AI technologies to track flight patterns in 3D around the developer’s Aberdeen wind farm from the European Offshore Wind Deployment Centre (EOWC) in Scotland.
Video recordings produced “invaluable” data on the movements of kittiwakes, herring gulls, black-backed gulls and gannets.
Kittiwakes displayed avoidance behaviour from around 150 metres from the rotors, commuting herring gulls from around 100 metres and feeding herring gulls from 70 metres.
In general, gannets and small and large gulls also showed a strong tendency to avoid flying into the area swept by the turbine blades.
Vattenfall said no collisions or even narrow escapes were recorded in over 10,000 bird videos, while nearly all species of tracked seabirds avoided the zone of the turbine blades by adjusting their flight paths to fly between the turbines. https://renews.biz/84106/vattenfall-seabird-study-maps-detailed-flight-patterns/?fbclid=IwAR2EPK-uSgZrK-U2gw8xIK1jMfPs0hpdqBgzrYeQTQADynPfufcLlB_I2Zw
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