The Birdwatcher: Turning Bird Data Into the Case for Smarter Wind Energy

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Spoor, in collaboration with FP7 McCANN MENAT, announces The Birdwatcher, an initiative that transforms complex wildlife monitoring data into an open, accessible experience, making previously invisible bird activity around wind farms visible to policymakers, industry, and the public.

Wind energy is built to protect the future. But for too long, one part of that future has remained harder to see. Every year, birds and bats, including endangered and protected species, face real risks around wind farms: collisions, habitat disruption, and the buffer zones that slow development in response. At a time when renewable energy must scale faster than ever, what if the answer is not less wind, but better intelligence?

To address this, Spoor, in collaboration with FP7 McCANN MENAT, has launched The Birdwatcher, an initiative that turns complex AI monitoring data into a visible, public record, demonstrating that wind energy and wildlife can coexist.

Spoor's technology, a patent-protected system combining AI-powered computer vision, geometric flight analysis, and ecological domain knowledge, continuously detects, tracks, and classifies birds and enables curtailment at wind energy sites to prevent fatalities.

For decades, the wind industry relied on human observers with binoculars to track bird activity. 

The result was slow, fragmented data that failed to satisfy regulators, often leading to oversized buffer zones and stalled permits. 

Estimates suggest U.S. wind facilities alone are responsible for several hundred thousand to over 1.2 million bird deaths annually, with global figures likely several times higher. (Source: American Bird Conservancy, 2021)

The Birdwatcher challenges that model by showing what becomes possible when biodiversity monitoring is treated not as a manual process, but as intelligent infrastructure.

Spoor built a smarter approach. Its Sky Intelligence Platform uses camera-agnostic AI to monitor wind sites continuously, with detection ranges of up to 1.5 kilometers and at least 95% accuracy. 

The technology gives wind developers and operators continuous, verifiable bird and bat activity data to support permitting, risk mitigation, operational decision-making, and long-term compliance.

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That intelligence can be used across site prospecting, environmental impact assessments, permitting processes, operational risk analysis, and mitigation planning. It helps identify nesting areas and high-activity corridors, protect habitats used by endangered and protected species, and support smarter siting decisions before turbines are even built. Across onshore and offshore wind projects, Spoor's role is to replace uncertainty with evidence, helping the industry scale with better biodiversity intelligence, not assumptions.

At Aberdeen Bay, one Spoor system monitored bird activity around a turbine for 19 months, capturing approximately 95 per cent of daylight hours, recording 2,007 bird tracks, flagging five potential collision events and confirming none. The proof was there. It just was not visible.

Independent scientific trials have validated Spoor's detection and tracking capabilities against human observations, with the system's recall rates confirmed in a peer-reviewed report. Spoor is also the first solution able to monitor bird activity from a buoy, FLiDAR, or metocean platform, expanding continuous monitoring into offshore and other hard-to-access environments.

The Birdwatcher campaign transforms Spoor's data into an open, accessible experience, making bird activity around wind farms visible to everyone, from policymakers to the public.

The campaign ecosystem includes an interactive microsite where users can explore data-driven flight paths through the eyes of the largest gull on earth, an Instagram feed documenting bird activity, and a physical bird guidebook with augmented reality features distributed to key stakeholders.

Ask Helseth, CEO of Spoor said: "Every wind project faces the same question from regulators, communities and investors: what happens to the birds? We built the technology to answer that with evidence, not assumptions. The data shows coexistence is achievable, and it should no longer sit buried in reports that most people never read."

"Our objective was to make complex data impossible to ignore," said Federico Fanti, Regional Chief Creative Officer, FP7 McCANN MENAT. "By making it continuously visible, both online and in the real world, we ensured it reached the people who have the power to act. The argument against wind energy was built on missing data. Spoor produced it. The Birdwatcher makes sure the world sees it."

To know more about The BirdWatcher, please visit: www.thebirdwatcher.ai

Credits List

CLIENT - SPOOR

Mohyletska Uliana, Marketing Director 

Ralph Natter Berg, CCO 

Edgar Kamga-Sande, Content Director

CREATIVE AGENCY – FP7 MCCANN Dubai

Leadership Team: 

CEO Tarek Miknas

Managing Director Tarek Ali Ahmad

Creatives:

Regional Chief Creative Officer Federico Fanti

Executive Creative Director Nayaab Rais

Group Creative Director Jonathan Cruz

Senior Creative Director Paulo Engler

Associate Creative Director Rob Hall

Associate Creative Director Bruno Montoro

Associate Creative Director Diego Fernandez-Cid

Senior Copywriter Taha Khan

Copywriter Liam Galt

Design Director Arthur Melo

Motion Designer Kaue Akimoto

Editor Murilo DePaula

Senior Graphic Designer Jovir Alipio

Art Director Anna Smolkina

Copywriter - Liudmyla Ivakhnenko

Production Diogo Borges - Creative Tech (Blou Studio)

PR Senior PR Manager - Roksar Kamal

Global Creative Excellence Team

Global Chief Creative Officer: Andrés Ordóñez, McCANN

EVP, Global Creative Partner: Danilo Boer, McCANN

SVP, Global Executive Creative Producer: John Bleeden

Creative Excellence Manager: Alice Reindlova, McCANN

Corporate PR Specialist:  Corina Nica, McCANN