NOISY wind farms in California are making squirrels edgy and prone to scurrying for cover. This change in behaviour could have knock-on effects on animals that depend upon the squirrel, such as the golden eagle, which feeds on the rodent, and the red-legged frog and California tiger salamander, which live in its burrows.
Lawrence Rabin of the University of California at Davis and his colleagues compared the behaviour of two groups of Californian ground squirrels in similar environments, except that one group lives close to a wind farm.
The biologists played recordings of alarm calls to each group of squirrels.…
