Not that it much matters, since we now know that cats are the real killers that must be stopped, but there’s good news in the long-running controversy about wind power and birds. A study of the notorious wind turbines in California’s Altamont Pass suggests that efforts to reduce the number of bird deaths from the spinning blades are succeeding.

Shutting down turbines in the winter months, removing particularly poorly sited turbines and replacing hundreds of smaller, older turbines with fewer newer, larger turbines are all cited in what researchers say has been a decline of around 50 percent in fatalities to four focal species – the American kestrel, burrowing owl, golden eagle and red-tailed hawk – since the middle of the last decade.

This