Solar bird kills

Windmills have been known to be fatal to birds. Now we learn that solar arrays are killing them as well. From Burbank, CA public television station KCET:

Great Blue Herons Die at Solar Project
ReWire reported Wednesday that a surprising number of water birds are being found dead and injured at a pair of solar energy facilities in the California desert. Since publishing that story we've learned that the toll is greater than we reported: two great blue herons have been found dead at one of the projects.

According to compliance documents provided to ReWire by the California Energy Commission late Wednesday, the mortalities were discovered on June 28 and July 8 at the 250-megawatt Genesis Solar Energy Project being built by NextEra about 25 miles west of Blythe in Riverside County.

Great blue herons are very large wading birds ranging from three to four and a half feet tall with wingspans in excess of six feet. Frequently seen in wetlands along the Colorado River and the Salton Sea, great blue herons are often spotted at the artificial Lake Tamarisk 25 miles west of the Genesis site, and project biologists have recorded a few sightings of the birds in the air above the site in the last year.

It looks like the birds confused the mirror arrays for open water:

Like great blue herons, both cliff swallows and yellow-headed blackbirds generally just migrate through the desert surrounding the Genesis site. What prompted the four birds to visit the site is unknown, though as we speculated in Wednesday's piece, reflections from the project's mirrors could conceivably have persuaded the birds that water could be found on the site. The project's evaporation ponds are netted to keep birds out. That netting likely provides partial concealment of any water in the ponds to birds passing overhead, but that may have made little difference once the birds landed.