Bats Hit By a Hard 1-2 Punch: Deadly Windmills And White-Nose Disease

"It’s not that researcher Paul Cryan set out to prove the old saying, 'blind as a bat.' It just seems that way.

For two months, Cryan, a research scientist for the U.S. Geological Survey, led a team that watched the behaviors of migrating tree bats near wind turbines. They set up thermal video surveillance cameras to study them night after night in an attempt to discern why up to 900,000 bats are killed by windmills each year.

In the end, they came away with a simple conclusion. Migrating bats that are vision-challenged seem to think wind turbines are trees."

Darryl Fears reports for the Washington Post October 12, 2014.