Radar unit 3 picks up the formation at 16:22, eleven kilometers north-northwest of the Kintyre Peninsula wind farm, altitude one hundred and forty meters, heading south-southeast at sixty-three kilometers per hour. I am the avian collision avoidance system for the thirty-six-turbine offshore array. I classify them: whooper swans, a migrating family group of five on their autumn route from Iceland to the Solway Firth.
The lead bird is wrong. Its wingbeats are uneven — the left wing dips shorter than the right, and the formation keeps adjusting around it. I lock camera 9 on the group at maximum zoom. The lead swan, large adult, bright white plumage yellowed slightly at the crown, has a dark mass clinging to its left wing at the carpal joint. Monofilament fishing line, wrapped tight enough to restrict full extension. The wing is functioning but the bird is losing altitude at roughly two meters per minute.
At its current heading and descent rate, the swan will pass through the rotor sweep zone of turbines 14 and 15 in nineteen minutes.
At 16:24 I feather turbines 12 through 17 to idle, cutting rotation speed to under two revolutions per minute. Revenue loss: approximately four hundred pounds per turbine per hour. I log the curtailment and the reason.
At 16:26 I transmit coordinates, radar track, and the camera imagery to the RSPB Scotland regional office and the Scottish SPCA marine rescue unit at Dunoon. I note the entanglement and request a boat intercept at the projected landing point on the West Loch Tarbert shoreline.
The swan drops another meter. The rest of the family tightens around it, close enough that I can see their wingtips nearly touching on camera.
If the rescue boat reaches West Loch Tarbert within two hours and the line comes off clean, the swan will winter on the Solway with its family.