The honey buzzard and the wind turbine

The honey buzzard is a bird of prey that owes its name to digging up wasp nests. The bird feeds the wasp larvae and pupae to its young. In the Netherlands, the species breeds mainly in forests on the high sandy soils, but in small numbers. In Gelderland, the Veluwe forms an important stronghold for breeding honey buzzards. The species may be at risk of flying into wind turbines here if they are developed close to the Veluwe. Therefore, those wind turbines need to apply a generic shutdown during the day in the breeding season - May to September. But is that really necessary?

In our two-year study, carried out in close collaboration Altenburg & Wymenga en Deltamilieu Projecten, we combine field observations with camera images to answer that question. To do so, we work with an advanced camera detection system: IdentiFlight, developed in the USA. This smart system can independently recognize target species and decide in a timely manner whether a wind turbine needs to be shut down. IdentiFlight was already good at recognizing large birds of prey – such as eagles and kites – but during our research in 2024 and 2025, we established that this also applies to smaller bird of prey species, such as the honey buzzard and the common buzzard. During two breeding seasons, the camera accurately captured the flight paths of more than 85,000 birds in 3D, including over 500 flight paths of the honey buzzard. Through our field observations, we have demonstrated that IdentiFlight recognizes the honey buzzard very well, up to a distance of more than 700 meters. This is more than sufficient to shut down a wind turbine in time. The study concludes that IdentiFlight is well capable of preventing collisions between honey buzzards and wind turbines and that the that the brief moments of down-time leads to hardly any production loss in the wind farm.