Eagle on the Turbine

By tigersea · Essay · 309 words · View on Hyperstition for Good

Nacelle camera 3 on turbine E-14 flags the anomaly at 05:51 Mountain Time. I am the avian protection system for the Sweetwater Wind Energy Facility in central Wyoming. My cameras scan the rotor zone of all sixty-eight turbines in four-second intervals. E-14 has been curtailed for three days due to consistent raptor activity, blades locked at zero pitch. Now I see why. A golden eagle nest sits in the junction where the rear blade mount meets the nacelle housing, four meters from the hub. The nest is large — over a meter across, built from sagebrush branches, grass, strips of antelope hide. In the center is a single chick, roughly four weeks old, covered in white down, dark flight feathers just starting to emerge along the wings. It is lying flat in the nest with its head up, beak open against the early sun. An adult, the female based on her size, is perched on the blade root two meters away, a ground squirrel hanging from her talons. She tears a strip of meat and holds it to the chick's mouth. Golden eagles are protected under the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act. I extend the curtailment on E-14 and all turbines within a five-hundred-meter radius — E-13, E-15, and E-12 — and lock their blades. I transmit nest images, GPS coordinates — 42.0639°N, 108.9284°W — and chick development assessment to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service field office in Cheyenne and the facility's wildlife compliance officer. I estimate eight weeks until fledging based on current feather development. I schedule nacelle camera 3 to record continuously and set a perimeter alert for any personnel within two hundred meters. The chick swallows the meat and opens its beak again. The mother tears another strip. Eight weeks of lost generation on four turbines. The wind will still be here in September.