birds

We thought that solar parks were a death trap for birds. 19,000 hours of video and an AI have just dismantled the myth

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During the last decade, the story of the energy transition has carried a shadow of suspicion. The visual image of a sea of ​​glass and silicon, dark and geometric, made us believe that the installation of large solar parks was equivalent to sterilizing the earth. We imagined a devastated ecosystem, an industrial desert where the hum of transformers chased away any trace of fauna. It seemed the inevitable price to pay for decarbonizing our economy. However, when science has decided to turn off the noise of public debate and turn on the cameras to observe what really happens under those plates, the result has broken all schemes. The AI ​​that watched the sky. One of the deepest fears was the theory that solar panels acted as a lethal mirage for birds. To clear up this mystery, an exhaustive study published in the scientific journal Diversity has resorted to the latest technology. A team of scientists installed high-definition cameras at five photovoltaic plants in the United States (spread across the desert Southwest, Midwest and Northeast) and collected more than 19,000 hours of daytime recordings over several years. Given the human impossibility of reviewing such a quantity of footage, the researchers developed an Artificial Intelligence model (MODT) designed specifically to detect and track moving objects. After filtering more than 4,000 hours of video, AI and human reviewers identified 68,646 bird appearances. An unprecedented find. Not a single bird collision with solar infrastructure was confirmed in all the observations analyzed. Far from colliding or being disoriented by the supposed “lake effect” of the panels, the images showed that the birds integrate the solar plant into their daily lives: they fly over it (an activity that accounted for around 54% of the observations), cross it underneath, look for food on the ground, preen and even nest in the metal structures themselves. More life inside than outside. Crossing the Atlantic, scientific evidence supports this coexistence. According to a study published in AgricultureEcosystems & Environmentcarried out by researchers in Poland, small-scale solar farms located in agricultural environments significantly increase birdlife diversity. After analyzing 43 photovoltaic parks and comparing them with 43 neighboring control areas, Polish experts documented that the vast majority of species improved their presence. Except for the meadowlark, which showed a negative reaction, species typically threatened in rural areas such as the wildcatcher or the northern stonechat appeared in much larger numbers within the park. As the study explains, the facilities provide them with safe breeding areas, tall grass (which is mowed late or left to grow) and fences perfect for perching, singing and monitoring their prey. This reality is identical in our country. As we recently explained in Xataka, Spanish photovoltaic enclosures are acting as authentic sanctuaries. The data collected by the Spanish Photovoltaic Union (UNEF) and audited by the environmental consulting firm EMAT in 2025 show an irrefutable pattern. In Minglanilla (Cuenca), 32 species of birds were found inside the solar plant compared to 19 in the external agricultural area. In Revilla Vallejera (Burgos) the balance was 39 versus 34, and in Trujillo (Cáceres), 31 versus 25. Furthermore, these enclosures not only house common birds, but have become home to protected or seriously declining species such as the curlew, the little bustard or the lesser kestrel. What is the secret of this explosion of life? The answer requires changing perspective. These parks are not being installed on virgin forests, but on fields that have been subjected to intensive agriculture for decades. According to Martín Behardirector of Studies and Environment at UNEF, by building a solar park a de facto “ecological exclusion zone” is created where tractors, pesticides and herbicides disappear. Human silence attracts weeds; weeds to insects; insects to small birds, and these to large birds of prey. The key: active management. If energy companies limit themselves to fumigating the land or sweeping the brushcutter to leave the ground bare for convenience, the park will effectively be an inert desert. For flora and fauna to return, will and active management are required: using native seeds, leaving wild ecological strips on the margins, allowing extensive grazing for natural control of forage and avoiding agrotoxins at all costs. The data has spoken. We had been fearing for years that solar panels would destroy life in the countryside. It turns out that, managed with rigor and sensitivity, they have the exact power to do just the opposite: heal the ecological wounds of centuries of agricultural exploitation and give nature a voice. Image | AnkerSolix Xataka | The largest study to date on solar panels and their effect on the field debunks several persistent myths

It turns out that birds and insects live much better under them

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We have been hearing for years that the expansion of solar parks threatens the countryside. The mental image we usually have is of hectares and hectares of black panels under a relentless sun, devastating the landscape and without a single bird for miles around. However, the data is beginning to tell a radically different story. There is more life inside than outside. To understand this phenomenon, we only have to look at the most recent data in Spain. According to a report from the Spanish Photovoltaic Union (UNEF)endorsed by the independent environmental consultancy EMAT, photovoltaic enclosures are proving to be refuges full of life. After analyzing different facilities in 2025, the pattern is repeated within the park, there are more species than in the adjacent agricultural field. The numbers in three different provinces leave no room for doubt: Minglanilla (Cuenca): Researchers counted a total of 32 species of birds inside the solar plant, compared to the 19 they found in the control agricultural area located just outside. Revilla Vallejera (Burgos): The balance recorded 39 species inside the facility compared to 34 outside. Trujillo (Cáceres): 31 species were detected living between the panels, compared to 25 outside them. And what kind of tenants are arriving? They are not just common birds. The presence of protected or declining species such as the curlew, the little bustard, the roller, the owl and the lesser kestrel have been documented. And the food chain works its magic: as wild vegetation grows, insects arrive; with the insects, come the birds; and the abundance of these prey is attracting birds of prey such as eagles, vultures, hawks and owls. There is no technology, but something simpler. To understand why this is happening you have to change the reference point. The question is not whether a solar park is ecologically better than a virgin forest, because it clearly is not. The key is to compare it with what was before in that field. In the vast majority of cases, these fields were previously intensive agricultural operations: impoverished landscapes, treated with herbicides and profoundly silent. In contrast, installing a solar park de facto introduces an ecological exclusion zone. In other words, no pesticides or herbicides are used, hunting is prohibited and there is no tillage of the land, and human presence is reduced to very specific maintenance visits. As Martín Behar points outdirector of Studies and Environment at UNEF, this lack of chemicals, added to natural vegetation management through extensive grazing, is generating fantastic results on biodiversity. Spain It is not an anomaly. At an international level, what science is beginning to call “conservatory” systems (the union of renewable generation and active conservation) already has fascinating evidence. In the United Kingdom, a study led by the RSPB and the University of Cambridge analyzed six solar parks in East AngliaEdit. The conclusion was that they housed a greater wealth of birds than nearby crops. In those better managed (with unpruned hedges and varied vegetation), almost three times as many birds were found than in neighboring fields. But perhaps the most curious story comes from Australia. A Lightsource bp study followed 1,700 merino sheep for three years. Half lived in traditional grass fields and the other half lived among photovoltaic panels. The discovery surprised everyone: the sheep that grazed in the solar park produced better quality wool. The reason is that the microclimate under the modules allowed them to alternate between fresh forage, dry grass and hay several times a year, something not feasible in a normal paddock in full sun. It’s not enough to plant the panels and cross your fingers. Of course, the researchers themselves warn of something fundamental: that solar parks can benefit the ecosystem does not mean that they always do so by magic. It is not enough to install the panels and wait. If you just cut the grass close and leave a “simple habitat”, there will be no miracle. For the magic to happen, active management is needed: maintain vegetation covers, use native vegetation on the margins, create ecological corridors and rely on sheep as a natural lawnmower. To push the industry in this direction, UNEF has promoted a Seal of Excellence in Sustainability, developed hand in hand with experts from WWF and SEO/BirdLife. The debate is changing. What makes photovoltaic energy an ally for biodiversity or a territorial threat is, simply, what we decide to do with it. Image | Pexels Xataka | Australia compared 1,700 sheep and discovered something unexpected: those that graze among solar panels give better quality wool

Wind turbine blades are a deadly danger to birds. The solution: paint them like poisonous snakes

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One of the great drivers of the global energy transition are wind turbines. Of course, they have been carrying a silent problem for decades: they kill animals. Wind turbines kill 368,000 birds a year in the United States and Canada alone, according to this study published in PubMed. The data for Europe is more fragmented and varies greatly by country and type of facility: in Germany for example place mortality between 100,000 and 250,000 birds per year and SEO/BirdLife esteem that between 1.2 and 4.6 million birds die per year (data from 2023). Given that the expansion of wind power seems unstoppable, the question is how to minimize these deaths, e.g. with self-adaptive speed blades. A research team from the University of Helsinki and the University of Exeter has just publish a proposal unexpectedly simple but effective (judging by its results): painting the blades with the colors of poisonous animals, appealing to one of the most solid principles of evolutionary biology. Those dangerous snake-painted wind turbines. The research team exposed birds to videos of turbines spinning in four color schemes: standard white, a black blade, red-white stripes, and a red-black-yellow biomimetic pattern that was inspired by coral snakes and dart frogs. The result was clear: the birds systematically avoided the blades with the biomimetic pattern and moved closer to the white ones. The remarkable thing about the discovery is why it works. It was not necessary for the birds to learn in the experiment to associate those colors with danger like Pavlov: They were already learned from home. The key is in aposematism, just the opposite of camouflage: signaling danger with colors, something that has been engraved in the nervous system of birds for millions of years. The team simply transferred that evolutionary signal to a huge steel structure. Why is it important. The United States Renewable Energy Institute calculate that per megawatt installed the turbines kill between two and six birds and between four and seven bats, figures that seem small but are considerable on a global scale: the world’s wind capacity already exceeds 1,000 GW installed, according to the Global Wind Energy Council. Reducing the death of animals is the main reason, a good practice that is even more relevant if the species in question has a small population. If the solution is also something as cheap as changing the paint color, the cost-benefit in terms of conservation is difficult to ignore. Context. Aposematism is a documented evolutionary mechanism for almost two centuries: The idea is that certain toxic or dangerous animals warn of their danger with bright colors. The winning combination to scare you is red-black-yellow, universally recognized as a sign of toxicity among vertebrates. What this study does is apply this principle outside of the natural world by projecting it onto an industrial infrastructure. It is not a pioneer: there is a previous investigation in Norway in which they tried painting a blade black to break the optical illusion of a “still hole” created by the spinning turbines and the results were already promising. This new study goes a step further by actively exploiting the perception of danger. How it works. The birds process color in a radically different way from humans. They have four types of photoreceptors instead of three, which gives them tetrachromatic vision and allows them to detect ultraviolet. In short: they appreciate contrast better than humans, so apostematic signals are extraordinarily striking to them. For the experiment they used touch screens designed specifically for birds, so that they interacted with them by moving closer or further away from the stimuli, thus allowing them to precisely quantify how they behaved in response to each pattern. The biomimetic pattern was the most avoided of all. Yes, but. As the research team acknowledges in the paper, all tests were carried out in the laboratory, with birds in front of screens, not with wind turbines spinning in the open field. Perception distance, approach angle, flight speed or weather conditions are variables that the experiment does not replicate. Taking it to the real world can be a very different story. Furthermore, the study was carried out with a limited number of species. Aposematic responses depend on the evolutionary history of each lineage and whether that group has coevolved with those dangerous species in its territory. Come on, what may be useful for birds native to an area may be useless for migratory raptors or for species affected in specific wind farms. In Xataka | There are cannibalistic rabbits on a farm in Valladolid. His rancher is clear about the reason: wind turbines In Xataka | Spain’s bats live in uncertain times. The reason, according to the CSIC: the wind turbines Cover | Gonz DDL and David Clode Alfonso Castro

In 2014 it was inaugurated as the largest solar thermal power plant in the world. 12 years later they want to close it after incinerating birds

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The huge Ivanpah solar thermal power plant, opened in 2014 in the Mojave Desert, was almost closed after just 11 years of operation. An end accelerated by its history of technical, economic and environmental problems that, however, was paralyzed in January of this year after the agreement of all those involved. Context. Concentrated solar thermal energy, once considered one of the most cutting-edge technologies for clean electricity generation, is not going through its best moment. Especially in Nevada, where the Crescent Dunes fiasco was already very public. The concentrating solar thermal system uses thousands of mirrors, or “heliostats”, that follow the path of the sun to concentrate its light on central towers. In these towers, the extreme heat is used to heat water and produce steam, which drives turbines connected to electrical generators. The Ivanpah case. The Ivanpah plant was built with an investment of $1.6 billion in loans from the U.S. Department of Energy and long-term contracts from major electric companies. It was the largest solar thermal power plant in the world until the inauguration of Port Augusta in Australia. 11 years after its inauguration, the enormous solar thermal plant began to close after failing to meet its initial expectations. The lack of profitability condemned it, at least a priori. A succession of rulings and complaints from environmental groups about its impact on wildlife accelerated its end, approved by the US Department of Energy. Continuity. However, the decision was reversed in January 2026 by the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC). Ivanpah will remain open. Their argument is that uncertainty in federal renewable energy policies forces us to prioritize the reliability of the current electricity supply. In addition, the commission seeks to prevent the enormous investment in infrastructure already made from being lost, despite the high operating costs and the serious environmental impact on local fauna. The measure ignores the previous agreement between the companies to close the plant and save money for users. A priori, it will remain open until its contract expires in 2039. A complex technology. One of the main problems has been the difficulty of keeping the mirrors precisely aligned. The technology, which requires exact tracking of the sun, has proven to be unstable and unreliable in practice, says a CNN report. The maintenance of the complex mechanisms and the management of the turbines in turn generate high operating costs, which has caused concentrated solar thermal to lose competitiveness compared to other renewable technologies, especially photovoltaic solar, whose prices have plummeted. A bird cremation machine. The criticism is not limited to the technical aspects. The Ivanpah plant has been questioned for years for its environmental impact, especially on desert wildlife. Environmental groups denounce the irreparable damage to the habitat of species such as the desert tortoise. But also the death of birds that are incinerated by the intense rays concentrated by the mirrors. A second Crescent Dunes. The case of Crescent Dunes, also occurring in Nevada, reinforces this image of failure of solar thermal energy. This project, which was intended to be one of the milestones in innovation and energy storage using molten salts, ended up becoming a multimillion-dollar waste. Developed by the Spanish group ACSpromised continuous production of electricity, even during hours without light, thanks to thermal storage in salts. In practice, Crescent Dunes never managed to deliver the promised amount of energy and ended up going bankrupt due to engineering and management problems. In the shadow of photovoltaics. In short, the rapid fall in prices of photovoltaic technology and its lower impact on wildlife have made concentrated solar thermal obsolete. While solar panels have been gaining efficiency and reducing their installation and maintenance costs, solar thermal plants have lagged behind in terms of competitiveness, which has led investors and electricity companies to reconsider their bets on this type of projects. In Xataka | The first central tower solar plant to be commercially exploited is in Seville: a pioneer that has survived other more ambitious ones In Xataka | Chile has one of the most valuable skies on Earth. Renewables are putting it on the ropes In Xataka | China’s largest solar park is doing much more than generating energy: it’s greening a desert Image | Pexels

that the birds recover their original song

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Noise is an invisible pollutant, but its effects can be seen. To begin with, the natural soundstage changes, altering the behavior of animals and affects health of humans and other species. It is true that in cities noise pollution is usually overshadowed by other pollution such as air or water quality, but its consequences are equally tangible. At the beginning of this century, studies on urban birds They found that noise caused by human activity causes birds to sing at higher frequencies to avoid masking traffic, a source of low-frequency noise. What Paris has achieved. As collects the paper published in Oxford Academicthe French capital has been fighting noise for decades directly and indirectly, especially focused on traffic, which shows a transformation in its urban mobility: it has gone from having 250 kilometers of bicycle lanes in 2003 to 800 kilometers in 2023, recycling traditional traffic lanes, with sound-absorbing asphalt, lowering speed limits, the expansion of electric vehicles and the installation of acoustic chambers capable of detecting and fining the noisiest vehicles (the famous “Medusa radars“). The result is obvious: the government agency Bruitparif demonstrates that Paris is today approximately three decibels quieter than it was almost 20 years ago (since 2008). It may not seem like much, but it is worth remembering that the decibel scale is logarithmic and that in practice this reduction represents approximately half of the previous sound intensity. Why is it important. The WHO is clear: Noise is the second most harmful environmental stressor for health in Europe (behind air pollution) and prolonged exposure to it increases the risk of cardiac ischemia, hypertension and sleep disorders in humans. The European Environment Agency details in its 2025 report that noise contributes to 49,000 new cases of ischemic heart disease annually on the continent. The prestigious The Lancet states in this paper that nocturnal noise causes sleep fragmentation, which raises blood pressure and, in the long term, damages the endothelium. If we stick to birds and their song, it is something like human language: they are culturally transmitted from generation to generation and changes in song are also learned by individuals of the same species in the environment. But it goes beyond changing a sound: it affects your ability to attract a mate, warn of danger, defend your territory or simply communicate. And be careful because this also affects other species such as whales because of the noise of the boats either the bats. This other one study published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B which analyzes 160 species of birds since 1990 found that noise significantly impacts communication, risk behaviors, feeding, aggression and physiology, with a clear negative effect on reproduction. Context. He Noise Prevention Plan in the Environment of Paris seeks to transform the French capital into a more livable city, becoming a living laboratory where urban planning and sensory planning combine to try to curb the impact of decades of acoustic degradation due to automobile dependency. For the study of Parisian birds, the great tit is the sentinel, using recordings of its songs both in the center of Paris and in the Fontainebleau forest as a wild reference. This observation is not new: already in 2006 a study showed that the chickadees that sing under the Eiffel Tower did so with a minimum frequency 400 Hz higher than those that sang in the Fontainebleau forest. This pattern has been replicated in other cities and species and the result is the same: it is common for birds to increase the minimum frequency of song in response to urban noise. The pending subject. Even though noise has decreased, Parisian tits continue to sing with significantly higher minimum frequencies than non-urban birds, and these frequencies have not decreased along with noise reduction. The explanation, according to the research teamis the cultural mechanism: young birds learn to sing by imitating the adults in their environment and for decades the only adults available to teach them sang high because it was the only way to make themselves heard. Now the city is quieter, but there are no teachers who sing gravely to learn. The habit persists even if the original cause has diminished. San Francisco in COVID-19 leads the way: during the pandemic background noise was reduced by about seven decibels and the white-crowned sparrow responded by singing at lower frequencies. Nature is speaking loud and clear: the reduction achieved by Paris is real but insufficient. In Xataka | China was the great polluter of the planet: now it is emerging as the first “electrostate” in history In Xataka | If the question is whether a skyscraper can be erased without demolishing it, Paris has the answer: yes, in exchange for a fortune Cover | Noureddine BOUABDALLAH and Alexander Kagan

Birds in cities are more afraid of women than men

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Walking through a park and having a pigeon, a parrot and a sparrow fly away when we approach is quite an everyday occurrence, since they see us as a threat, probably due to our large size in comparison. But the truth is that we now know that this gesture It is more common when the human approaching is a womanas if it were a genre that scared him more. They have investigated it. This curiosity has been the conclusion reached by a published scientific study in British Ecological Society in which it is noted that birds escape sooner when women approach than when men approach. And to get here, the research team did not rely on a few observations, but designed an experiment that grouped 2,701 observations across five European countries and 37 different urban species. The results. If we look at specific figures, it has been seen that when the person approaching the birds is a woman, the flight distance is approximately one meter greater than when a man approaches. And here the question we can ask ourselves is whether this is a simple coincidence, but here the researchers have made it clear that this is not the case, since the conclusion that birds distinguish the sex of the human observer is statistically solid. And to ensure this accuracy, the researchers controlled multiple variables during the approaches, including initial distance, the size of the bird school, and surrounding tree cover. Because? Although the pattern of behavior is undeniable, the exact causes remain largely a mystery, with researchers pointing to a lack of a concrete explanatory mechanism. The theories that are mainly pointed out are related to different factors, such as differences in body shape between the woman and the mobile phone or even movement, since the way of walking can be a warning signal for animals. Furthermore, it is proposed that the smell that each of the genders has is a possible hypothesis to explain this anticipated flight reaction. But the truth is still a great mystery. Survival in evolution. The fact that birds pay so much attention to humans makes sense if we take into account the enormous evolutionary pressure that cities exert, since in a very short time birds have had to adapt to our presence and above all to the pressure of having us literally on top of them in part of their environment. And little by little we are learning that not all human beings have the same effect on them. Images | wirestock at Magnific ArthurHidden on Magnific In Xataka | Spain has a very ugly bird that does not want it to become extinct. And all of Europe depends on you not doing it

thousands and thousands of dead birds

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Recently in Budia, a town in the province of Guadalajara, covered the screens of their paddle tennis court with a white net. Said like this, it sounds like an anecdote, minor news, but things change when two other pieces of information are known. First, Budia has not been the only town to give its paddle tennis courts a spin. In fact, in the same province they have done something similar at least half a dozen municipalities. The second fact (and the most interesting) is that the change does not respond to aesthetic, logistical or sporting reasons. Its objective is to prevent paddle tennis from becoming a death trap for thousands and thousands of birds. And it makes a lot of sense. Spain, land of rackets. That we Spaniards like (we love it) paddle tennis has little new. According to the International Padel Federation (IPF), in 2024 there were in our country 4,500 clubs and facilities and around 17,000 slopes, which leaves one of the best ratios in the world: one slope for every 2,800 inhabitants. Catalonia and Andalusia stand out above all, with more than 3,200, followed by Madrid, with 2,300, and the Valencian Community (almost 2,000). That’s good, right? Of course. Yes, at least from a sporting or even social point of view. The problem is that this vast network of tracks has become a real headache for environmentalists and organizations in charge of protecting wildlife, especially birds. The reason? Many of these sports courts are surrounded by glass, large transparent sheets that become death traps when a blackbird, swallow, hoopoe, kite… hits them in mid-flight and at high speed. It’s not exactly something new. It’s been happening for years with windows and glass buildings, in addition to the acoustic barriers of the roads. What is new is that paddle tennis courts are added to the list. More than an anecdote. It is not a minor issue. Environmentalists know for a long time that glass windows claim the lives of millions of birds around the world every year. In New York alone it is estimated that skyscrapers leave a balance of 200,000 deaths per year. In the case of paddle tennis courts the balance is considerably lower, but it is still significant. In Spain, some studies have already been carried out that, remember elDiario.essuggest that there are clues that cause the death of a hundred birds. It is not bad at all if we take into account that it is an annual calculation and (although not all of them are the same or have glass windows) there are thousands of installations throughout the country. What do the studies say? It is not easy to calculate how many birds die each year in Spain after hitting runway closures. I recognized it already in 2023 the State Attorney General’s Office, whose Environmental Office became interested in the problem. Reliable data is lacking because bird carcasses “often” are not even quantified. They leave the slopes without notifying the authorities or end up in the clutches of cats or foxes, which move them from place to place. That does not mean that we handle some studies on the subject. In 2019, the Aragon Department of the Environment analyzed three slopes in Zaragoza and discovered that in each of them people died every year. between 100 and 135 birds. It is a range similar to that shown in another analysis by the Generalitat Valenciana, which speaks of 75,000 victims per year in 600 tracks, which leaves an average of 125 per facility. In 2023 the Delta Birding Festival (DBF) already warned that only in Catalonia they died at least a year 24,000 birds crashed against the tracks. A question of figures… and something more. Perhaps the best proof that the issue generates concern (some of those birds are protected species) is that it not only worries environmentalists and organizations like DBF, GREFA or SEO BirdLife, which also has raised the voice to warn of the impact of the paddle tennis facilities. In 2023 it was the public ministry itself that moved token alerted by what it considers a “serious threat to birds.” To be more precise, the Environmental Prosecutor’s Office asked its provincial representatives to use the reform of the Penal Code approved that same year to combat the problem. Rethinking padel. Municipal governments have also taken note. Budia is just one of the seven town councils of the province of Guadalajara who have turned to the Group for the Rehabilitation of Native Fauna and Their Habitat (GREFA) to install “bird anti-collision measures” on their paddle tennis courts. In other parts of the country there are public and private organizations that have adopted similar measures. For example in Segovia, Valencia wave Community of Madridwhich in 2017 already installed vinyl on several tracks. He did so after detecting 50 dead birds and another half dozen stunned specimens in 11 months. The (other) pending task. The key is not only in wanting to solve the problem, but in knowing how to do it. The objective is for the windows to stop being ‘invisible’ to the birds and thus allow them to avoid them, avoiding collisions, but achieving this is not so easy. “A fundamental rule is that of the palm of the hand. If there is a gap smaller than a palm, 10 cm, smaller birds will think they can sneak through there,” explains to elDiario Carlos Cuéllar, GREFA technician. The organization’s commitment is rather to install nets like those that can already be seen in Budia, white nylon meshes that birds can detect from a distance and at the same time do not bother the athletes. A priori they are also safer than vinyl, since it prevents the adhesive from creating large pieces of glass if the panel breaks… with the consequent risk of cuts. Images | Bruno Vaccaro Vercellino (Unsplash), GREFA and P-squared Padel (Unsplash) In Xataka | Millions of birds are killed every year by wind turbines. The solution: self-adaptive speed blades

There was a time when we thought the birds migrated to the moon. Until an arrow released in Africa fell in Germany

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Spring is a time that I always liked. Not for the Horrible processionarybut for the return of the swallows And, above all, of the storks. After a long winter, They return home to nest. Imagine the surprise if, one day, one of those stork appears in your locality with the neck crossed by an 8 -centimeter arrow. Stop imagining because that happened in 1822 in a German city. And far from being an anecdote, it became a key event to unravel the mystery of why birds They disappeared in winter. The doubt. Now it is no mystery and it is something that we learn at school since childhood, but not so many centuries, people did not know why, good at first, the birds were in autumn and reappeared in spring. Those Migratory processes in which even the smallest of the birds rEcorren thousands of kilometers without stopping They were not understood, which forced the thinkers of the time to launch hypotheses and theories that, in the absence of evidence, since they were accepted without further ado. One of the answers was evident. And it could be none than … Alien birds. That is what thought Charles Morton, a Harvard academic who, in the seventeenth century, suggested that the reason why some birds disappeared in winter was because they migrated … to the moon. Most likely you have raised your eyebrow thinking something like “impossible, they could not be so illusory”, but you have to put into the skin of someone who had no way to check the phenomenon and it was still an answer to a real mystery. Because what they knew was that they disappeared for months, but not the place they were going to. And as they saw the moon from Massachusetts, but not Colombia, because the answer was clear. But don’t believe it was the only crazy theory of the time. Aristotle, already in the IV AC theorized about the possibility of being transformed into other species or even shuffled over his hibernation underwater. Morton rejected this idea because it was too fantasy (not like his, of course). The arrow. Morton even calculated that the trip to the moon had a month away and another back, sleeping much of the time and surviving thanks to his body fat. The truth is that, in the absence of better theories, it was not bad (despite my jocular tone, we talked about the seventeenth century and the media they had). However, little by little the idea that these European birds were going to other places during the winter. And the definitive test was brought by a stork. A good day of 1882, north of Germany, someone shot a stork, who fell down and with a capital surprise for those present: he had an 8 -centimeter arrow through his neck. The question was no longer how I could fly with such a breakdown, but where the arrow had come from. Brava PFEILSTORCH. Thus, they took the body of the stork to the University of Rostock, where the researchers examined the projectile and concluded that it was an arrow belonging to some group in the center of Africa. As it was impossible, or tremendously unlikely, that someone launched something like that on European soil, the response became evident: that stork had traveled more than 3,000 kilometers from the point in Africa in which winter had passed and where it was killed in Germany. Baptized as PFEILSTORCHIt was dissected and preserved in perfect condition in the Zoological Collection of the University of Rostock thanks to its undeniable importance in the world of science and ornithology: it was confirmation to the suspicions that, indeed, migratory birds or became anything else, nor slept four months underwater or went to the moon: they traveled to the warmest places during the European winter. Clue. After Pfeilstorch (which means “Flechy stork” or “storks crossed by an arrow”), they found more specimens In Europe with the same characteristics: arrows stuck somewhere in your body. This is not so uncommon in large birds, which show great resilience to wounds that do not compromise flight or its basic functions. Once they are injured, if not seriously, the wound stabilizes and the bird can continue with its life. With the inclusion Of the rings on the legs of the birds by the Danish HC Mortensen in 1899, the researchers systematized the study of specimens to verify that those who flew from Europe before winter, disappeared and then returned, were the same. Thus, we can say that this arrow launched in Africa that landed in Germany was the first bird monitoring system, a coincidence that allowed obtaining the first conclusive data on the migratory practices of the birds. Images | Thula Na In Xataka | Modern cities have become authentic “headlights.” For thousands of birds it is a problem

It was inaugurated in 2014 as the largest solar thermal energy plant in the world. Will close after setting fire to birds

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The huge Ivanpah thermosolar energy plant, opened in 2014 in the Mojave desert, will close after just 11 years of operation. An accelerated end for its history of technical, economic and environmental problems. Context. The thermal concentration energy, once considered one of the most avant -garde technologies for clean electricity generation, is not going through its best moment. Especially in Nevada, where Crescent Dunes fiasco was already very popular. The concentration thermoso use thousands of mirrors, or “heliosteats”, which follow the trajectory of the sun to concentrate its light on central towers. In these towers, extreme heat is used to heat water and produce steam, which drives turbines connected to electric generators. The Ivanpah case. The Ivanpah plant was built with an investment of 1.6 billion dollars in loans from the United States Department of Energy and long -term contracts for important electrical companies. It was the world’s largest solar thermal energy Until the inauguration of Port Augusta In Australia. 11 years after its inauguration, the huge thermosolar has begun to close by not fulfilling its initial expectations. The lack of profitability condemned her. A succession of failures and complaints from environmental groups for their impact on wildlife accelerated their end. A complex technology. One of the main problems has been the difficulty of maintaining mirrors aligned precisely. Technology, which requires an exact monitoring of the sun, has proven unstable and unreliable in practice, says a CNN report. The maintenance of the complex mechanisms and the management of the turbines in turn generate high operating costs, which has made concentration thermosar loses competitiveness compared to other renewable technologies, especially photovoltaic solar, whose prices have collapsed. A Bird Incinerate Machine. Criticisms are not limited to technical aspects. The Ivanpah plant has been questioned for years for its environmental impact, especially in the wildlife of the desert. Environmental groups denounce the irreparable damage in the habitat of species such as desert turtle. But also The death of birds that are incinerated by intense rays concentrated by mirrors. A second Crescent dunes. The case of Crescent Dunes, also occurred in Nevada, reinforces this image of failure of the thermosolar energy. This project, which was intended to be one of the milestones in energy innovation and storage through molten salts, ended up becoming a multimillionaire waste. Developed By the Spanish group ACSpromised continuous production of electricity, even during the hours without light, thanks to the thermal storage in salts. In practice, Crescent Dunes never managed to deliver the amount of promised energy and ended up breaking due to engineering and management problems. In the shadow of the photovoltaic. In short, the rapid drop in photovoltaic technology and its lower impact on wildlife have obsolete concentration thermos. While solar panels have gained efficiency and reducing their installation and maintenance costs, thermosolar plants have lagged behind in terms of competitiveness, which has led to investors and electrical companies reconsidering their bets in this type of projects. In Xataka | The first solar plant of Central Torre to explode commercially is in Seville: a pioneer that has survived more ambitious

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