A study that was published in Ecology and Evolution in April 2020 examined turbines at the Smøla wind-power plant, where researchers suspected that some birds were striking the tower itself rather than the moving blades. They compared painted turbines with nearby unpainted controls and found fewer recorded ptarmigan carcasses per search at the towers that had been treated. The findings suggest that the tower base can be a significant collision hazard for this ground-dwelling bird, although the researchers did not conclude that all collisions occurred with the tower.
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