Generally, it's worse along migratory routes, but even then it pales in comparison to other human impacts on birds. As the linked Wikipedia article states, estimates for bird deaths due to plate glass collisions are in the hundreds of millions per year in the US. By comparison, a Canadian study found an average of less than ten bird deaths per turbine per year in that country.
So, it's not zero-impact, and it's definitely something we ought to keep an eye on, but it's not nearly as bad as some people would leave you to believe. To hear the anti-wind lobby explain it, you'd imagine that wind turbines are giant spinning fan blades of death that migratory birds get sucked into and shredded in a cloud of gore. The reality is they have a bit of an impact on birds, but it's not nearly as bad as stuff we do already (like having windows on our buildings).
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_wind_p...
I'd wager it's concern trolling or outright lies more often than misconceptions. The people invoking this rarely give a wit about birds, they just find this a convenient stick to hit wind turbines with, either for denial purposes or for NIMBY purposes. Look no further than sverige downthread.
The number of birds killed by windmills is likely somewhere in the six figures annually. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/how-many-birds-do-...
> In the end, using 58 mortality estimates that met their criteria, they came up with an estimate. According to the current literature somewhere between 140,000 and 328,000 birds die each year from collisions with wind turbines.
If not, the ecological niche of eating the dead birds by our wind mills will be filled by some species.
Without knowing any numbers, I suspect the actual impact of wind power bird deaths is wholly insignificant, but it makes us feel bad since they're so visible.
Just like the whales will evolve to avoid humans and the pangolin evolved to avoid the Chinese market, right?
Some whale species live in excess of 200 years. They've only had a generation or two; evolution doesn't happen that fast.
We found a living whale a few years back with a harpoon stuck in it from the 1800s. https://www.foxnews.com/story/nineteenth-century-harpoon-fou...
Doesn't mean things can't go extinct but selection can change a population in a few generations.
Glass curtain walls have already provided competitive advantage to pigeons, parrots, and corvids over sparrows, thrushes, buntings, and warblers.
Some crows have figured out how to use window glass to get free meals. Herd that sparrow flock into the windmill, and the murder feasts below the mast.
Anthropogenic challenges overwhelmingly favor species with higher levels of individual intelligence.
The evolution will be that the dumber birds become endangered or go extinct, while the smarter birds expand their populations.
Bird deaths from windmills are less than other causes.