Abstract
When addressing potential threats of offshore wind farms on migrating birds, avoidance behavior in response to wind farms is among those commonly mentioned, meaning that wind farms can act as barriers for migrants. Substantial - but otherwise sparsely - proof for this exits from Denmark and The Netherlands. However, monitoring potential threats in the German Bight failed in providing evidence of an avoidance response of migrating birds to offshore wind farms. Minor adaptations of the current method of investigation and analysis provided here, however, have led to substantiated results. In addition, these adaptations can easily be incorporated into current standard protocols of environmental impact assessment studies. Demonstrating this, we here present an example of avoidance behavior of gannets Sula bassana in particular to a wind farm and of birds in general.