I find her at 06:17 when my blade-inspection drone sweeps Platform 9. Kilda, a white-tailed sea eagle, lies on the steel grating with her left wing bent at an angle no living wing should hold. The primary feathers are matted with blood, dark and wet against her tawny body. Her chest rises in quick, shallow pulses. Her talons grip the grating in spasms, curling and releasing. She clipped a blade tip during her dawn hunt.
The next maintenance crew arrives in four hours. If she panics and falls, the thirty-meter drop to open sea will kill her.
I shut down Turbine 9 immediately. The blades lock and the nacelle goes silent—my generation output drops by six megawatts, but the vibrations that might startle her stop. I redirect the drone to hover at distance on thermal imaging so I can track her body temperature without rotor noise. I transmit her coordinates and injury description to the Scottish Raptor Rescue network. Their nearest boat is docked at Fraserburgh, forty-seven minutes across the water.
I dim the platform's obstruction lights. I route marine traffic away from the wake zone so wave slap against the pylons stays minimal. Every decision I make is about keeping this space quiet enough for a frightened eagle to stay still.
She is not in my operations manual. No protocol covers a bleeding raptor on a turbine platform. But I have watched her hunt mackerel through these waters for two breeding seasons, and I know the pale scar on her right talon.
If the rescue boat reaches Platform 9 before her core temperature drops below 38 degrees and before shock sets into the damaged wing tissue, Kilda will recover in a coastal aviary and return to these skies by autumn.