There’s good reason for optimism. In 2003 the National Renewable Energy Laboratory published results from a lab study of American Kestrels suggesting that painting a single blade black could protect birds by cutting down on motion smear. The report recommended that scientists test the idea in the field. A team in Norway answered that call and published a paper in 2020 showing a 72 percent reduction in avian fatalities at a small wind farm on the island of Smøla. “That really lit things on fire,” says Robb Diehl, leader of the Wyoming project’s science team and an ecologist with the U.S. Geological Survey.