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Bats are no strangers to me...they were all over our villages in our childhood. The picture that I most vividly recollect was a tall bare tree from the branches of which dozens of bats used to hang upside down. By the way Google tells me that a colony of bats is also called: 'cloud' ;-)
I didn't know till today why they hang upside down. Bats, it seems, started off as animals but found it more lucrative to grow wings as a side-business... a la Jewelers-cum-Pawnbrokers.
In the process, their wings got too heavy and their legs too short and puny...less jewelry and more pawnbroking. So, they couldn't take off from ground like other birds like my favorite crow. And can't stand on their legs...top heavy like our bureaucracy. So they slowly climb a tree and perch down with their tiny legs hooked onto a branch like a coat hanger (simile mine...copyrighted). And when they wake up in the night for their prowl, all they have to do is to loosen their grip and fall down. And while falling they open their wings and take off.
I am told eagles train their young to fly by a similar method. They carry them on their backs, fly high, and suddenly dive down...their young are airborne and instinct tells them what to do. It is like a young research scholar flying on the back of his guide being trained to take off on his own as a post-doc...those that can't, drop dead.
At IIT KGP there were plenty of bats. But those that used to fly into our Qrs were very young. And as soon as we spotted one, we used to switch off our fans...didn't believe all that junk of ultrasonic radar after a couple of nasty accidents for poor batlings.
I am told that houses in North Calcutta during the 1960s with their high ceilings and log beams were housing a large number of bats post-midnight after their nightlife was over. But not so the upstart South Calcutta with its low flat roofs. I came to know this when my friend narrated his first-night vigil after wedding. Apparently he came from North Cal and married a posh young bride from South Cal. And after all those nuisance rituals were over, the bride and groom were shoved into their best and spacious hall for their eager consummation. But after a crucial while the bride lay down and looked up and fainted...
I didn't see many windmills though. Just a couple while traveling in the Howrah-Madras Mail near Rajahmundry. They were indeed whirling but not very fast. Today's newspaper tells me that parts of the AP district of Anantapur are blessed with constant winds of 45 kmph between April and September and very many private parties have taken all those breezy hillocks on lease from the Govt for installing wind farms.
The paper also has a lovely article by Clive Hambler on how windmills and bats are natural enemies. Here are excerpts from his article in The Spectator:
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...I’m a lecturer in biological and human sciences at Oxford university. I trained as a zoologist, I’ve worked as an environmental consultant — conducting impact assessments on projects like the Folkestone-to-London rail link — and I now teach ecology and conservation. Though I started out neutral on renewable energy, I’ve since seen the havoc wreaked on wildlife by wind power, hydro power, biofuels and tidal barrages. The environmentalists who support such projects do so for ideological reasons. What few of them have in their heads, though, is the consolation of science.
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Bats are no strangers to me...they were all over our villages in our childhood. The picture that I most vividly recollect was a tall bare tree from the branches of which dozens of bats used to hang upside down. By the way Google tells me that a colony of bats is also called: 'cloud' ;-)
I didn't know till today why they hang upside down. Bats, it seems, started off as animals but found it more lucrative to grow wings as a side-business... a la Jewelers-cum-Pawnbrokers.
In the process, their wings got too heavy and their legs too short and puny...less jewelry and more pawnbroking. So, they couldn't take off from ground like other birds like my favorite crow. And can't stand on their legs...top heavy like our bureaucracy. So they slowly climb a tree and perch down with their tiny legs hooked onto a branch like a coat hanger (simile mine...copyrighted). And when they wake up in the night for their prowl, all they have to do is to loosen their grip and fall down. And while falling they open their wings and take off.
I am told eagles train their young to fly by a similar method. They carry them on their backs, fly high, and suddenly dive down...their young are airborne and instinct tells them what to do. It is like a young research scholar flying on the back of his guide being trained to take off on his own as a post-doc...those that can't, drop dead.
At IIT KGP there were plenty of bats. But those that used to fly into our Qrs were very young. And as soon as we spotted one, we used to switch off our fans...didn't believe all that junk of ultrasonic radar after a couple of nasty accidents for poor batlings.
I am told that houses in North Calcutta during the 1960s with their high ceilings and log beams were housing a large number of bats post-midnight after their nightlife was over. But not so the upstart South Calcutta with its low flat roofs. I came to know this when my friend narrated his first-night vigil after wedding. Apparently he came from North Cal and married a posh young bride from South Cal. And after all those nuisance rituals were over, the bride and groom were shoved into their best and spacious hall for their eager consummation. But after a crucial while the bride lay down and looked up and fainted...
I didn't see many windmills though. Just a couple while traveling in the Howrah-Madras Mail near Rajahmundry. They were indeed whirling but not very fast. Today's newspaper tells me that parts of the AP district of Anantapur are blessed with constant winds of 45 kmph between April and September and very many private parties have taken all those breezy hillocks on lease from the Govt for installing wind farms.
The paper also has a lovely article by Clive Hambler on how windmills and bats are natural enemies. Here are excerpts from his article in The Spectator:
*************************************************************************************
...I’m a lecturer in biological and human sciences at Oxford university. I trained as a zoologist, I’ve worked as an environmental consultant — conducting impact assessments on projects like the Folkestone-to-London rail link — and I now teach ecology and conservation. Though I started out neutral on renewable energy, I’ve since seen the havoc wreaked on wildlife by wind power, hydro power, biofuels and tidal barrages. The environmentalists who support such projects do so for ideological reasons. What few of them have in their heads, though, is the consolation of science.
My speciality is species extinction. When I was a child, my father
used to tell me about all the animals he’d seen growing up in Kent — the
grass snakes, the lime hawk moths — and what shocked me when we went
looking for them was how few there were left. Species extinction is a
serious issue: around the world we’re losing up to 40 a day. Yet
environmentalists are urging us to adopt technologies that are hastening
this process. Among the most destructive of these is wind power.
Every year in Spain alone — according to research by the conservation
group SEO/Birdlife — between 6 and 18 million birds and bats are killed
by wind farms. They kill roughly twice as many bats as birds. This
breaks down as approximately 110–330 birds per turbine per year and
200–670 bats per year...
Because wind farms tend to be built on uplands, where there are good
thermals, they kill a disproportionate number of raptors. In Australia,
the Tasmanian wedge-tailed eagle is threatened with global extinction by
wind farms. In north America, wind farms are killing tens of thousands
of raptors including golden eagles and America’s national bird, the bald
eagle. In Spain, the Egyptian vulture is threatened, as too is the
Griffon vulture — 400 of which were killed in one year at Navarra alone.
Norwegian wind farms kill over ten white-tailed eagles per year and the
population of Smøla has been severely impacted by turbines built
against the opposition of ornithologists.
Nor are many other avian species safe. In North America, for example,
proposed wind farms on the Great Lakes would kill large numbers of
migratory songbirds. In the Atlantic, seabirds such as the Manx
Shearwater are threatened. Offshore wind farms are just as bad as
onshore ones, posing a growing threat to seabirds and migratory birds,
and reducing habitat availability for marine birds (such as common
scoter and eider ducks).
I’ve
heard it suggested that birds will soon adapt to avoid turbine blades.
But your ability to learn something when you’ve been whacked on the head
by an object travelling at 200 mph is limited. And besides, this comes
from a complete misconception of how long it takes species to evolve.
Birds have been flying, unimpeded, through the skies for millions of
years...
Loss of habitat is the single biggest cause of species extinction.
Wind farms not only reduce habitat size but create ‘population sinks’ —
zones which attract animals and then kill them. My colleague Mark
Duchamp suggests birds are lured in because they see the turbines as
perching sites and also because wind towers (because of the grass
variations underneath) seem to attract more prey. The turbines also
attract bats, whose wholesale destruction poses an ever more serious
conservation concern.
Bats are what is known as K-selected species: they reproduce very
slowly, live a long time and are easy to wipe out. Having evolved with
few predators — flying at night helps — bats did very well with this
strategy until the modern world. This is why they are so heavily
protected by so many conventions and regulations: the biggest threats to
their survival are made by us.
And the worst threat of all right now is wind turbines. A recent
study in Germany by the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research
showed that bats killed by German turbines may have come from places
1,000 or more miles away. This would suggest that German turbines —
which an earlier study claims kill more than 200,000 bats a year — may
be depressing populations across the entire northeastern portion of
Europe. Some studies in the US have put the death toll as high as 70
bats per installed megawatt per year: with 40,000 MW of turbines
currently installed in the US and Canada. This would give an annual
death toll of up to three-million.
Why is the public not more aware of this carnage? First, because the
wind industry (with the shameful complicity of some ornithological
organisations) has gone to great trouble to cover it up — to the extent
of burying the corpses of victims. Second, because the ongoing obsession
with climate change means that many environmentalists are turning a
blind eye to the ecological costs of renewable energy. What they clearly
don’t appreciate — for they know next to nothing about biology — is
that most of the species they claim are threatened by ‘climate change’
have already survived 10 to 20 ice ages, and sea-level rises far more
dramatic than any we have experienced in recent millennia or expect in
the next few centuries. Climate change won’t drive those species to
extinction; well-meaning environmentalists might.
The second edition of Clive Hambler’s Conservation (Cambridge University Press) is out now.
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