Birds landing at McNary wildlife refuge near Burbank, WA, originally uploaded by Scott Butner.
The area around my home poses an interesting dichotomy — the world’s most polluted, most expensive environmental clean-up (the Hanford site) and huge expanses of relatively clean wind power, sitting within eyesight of one another.
This is a shot looking south towards the Stateline Wind Farm project, near the alliteratively named town of Walla Walla, Washington. The view is from the McNary Wildlife Refuge, a very popular stopping point for waterfowl every winter. Every evening, tens of thousands of migratory waterfowl come to roost in the fields and ponds here, making a heckuva racket — actually a lot louder than the windmills, in many cases.
You’ll be seeing a lot of windmills in the P2 Picture Post of the week, partly because I’m fascinated by them, and partly because they are so common around here that it’s hard to avoid them.
By the way, these are not actually CALLED the Porcupine Hills — at least not to my knowledge. I just happen to think they look like porcupines with all the wind towers sticking off the ridge lines.