https://assets.dongenergy.com/DONGEnergyDocuments/horns/Hornsea%20Project%20One%20project%20summary.pdf What will be the impact on Lincolnshire's birds of the proposed 240-turbine wind farm off the Yorkshire Coast?
Work is due to start later this year, with completion scheduled for 2019.
The area will apparently cover 58,500 times the size of Blundell Park, home of Grimsby Town FC, and the tips of the turbine blades will be spectacularly higher than the Humber Bridge towers and Grimsby dock tower.
Daytime observers tell me that birds have "avoidance strategies" - they fly above / around wind farms or they adroitly weave a safe passage though the turbines.
But what about after dark, especially if there are sudden squalls, gales, mists or heavy rainfall?
Will there not be massive collision fatalities - affecting fieldfares, redwings, wrynecks, larks, starlings, waxwings, terns, auks, skuas, shearwater, raptors, swans, geese, ducks, phalaropes, golden plover and a host of other waders?
If so, what will be the impact on the bird populations not just of Lincolnshire but all the way down the East Coast from Yorkshire southwards? Not to mention those of Northern Europe. It could be like
Silent Spring revisited.
Even without collision, there will surely be huge displacement, affecting seabird feeding grounds as well as migration patterns.
There are already numerous wind farms in the North Sea, but this one will be the biggest of the lot - and it may even be extended.
It seems almost as if another deadly barrier to migration is about to be installed - without a word of alert (or even caution) from any of the wildlife protection organisations.
The RSPB seems to send out mixed messages. It is generally supportive of wind farms - except in specific cases (eg near gannet colonies). As far as I am aware, it has not expressed an opinion on this particular project.
The wildlife trusts seem to take a similar stance
Admittedly, I don't have a shred of evidence to support my concerns - I don't want to be a needless scaremongerer.
Please can someone in the know convince me that my worries are totally misplaced and that everything will be all right on the night?