Steve,
I don't want to start a long conversation on this but do want to correct several items.

1. Yes an Acorn Woodpecker was reported as a fatality in Klickitat County, just west of Rock Creek (well away from their known haunts). While the ID is likely correct, the memo I have on it gives no indication of how it was identified, so seems a little premature to conclude so quickly "its the facts". I hardly think we'd call a Blackburnian warbler with no details reported "the facts".

2. Several Ferruginous hawks have NOT been killed in Klickitat County and Benton County to my knowledge (and I'm pretty up to date on the details as I work with wildlife and wind just about every day). To date there have been two known fatalities of FEHA in WA, one was at Big Horn (near Bickleton) in Klickitat County (I was the biologist who identified that one and processed) and one at Stateline several years ago-2003 to be exact (I was the biologist who found and processed that one). In Oregon there have been 2 to date that have been reported in monitoring reports. Unless you know of one that I haven't heard of that would make 0 for Benton and 1 for Klickitat.

3. Yes, a Golden Eagle was found as a fatality at the same project in Klickitat County where the Acorn Woodpecker was found. Eagles have long been known to be susceptible to turbines as their first alarms at Altamont in CA were due to the amount of Golden Eagles being killed. This was the first eagle of any species to date found in the NW. I say found because typically our statistical estimates are at only about 15-30% of all raptor fatalities are actually found by searches (long-winded reason as to why, if anyone is interested they can contact off-list). it is very likely that other FEHA and GOEA have been killed and not found (its a tremendous amount of work to search for fatalities).

4. Finally woodpeckers as fatalities aren't new. Northern flickers have been a regular fatality and Downy Woodpecker, Lewis' Woodpecker have shown up as fatalities before. So have Virginia Rail and about 80 some other species. I'm not sure why we would be surprised, birds fly away from their protected areas and any bird flying 40-80 meters above the ground (typical range of most turbine blades being installed) are at risk. Some species are far more at risk than others but Yes, pretty much any species that flies through the airspace is at risk. This includes passerines, woodpeckers, waterfowl, gamebirds (chukar and partridge have been often found, though these are typically running into the towers), raptors etc.. etc.. We say sedentary for Acorn, yet a bird showed up in Yakima County, it had to get there somehow...
The typical composition is about 35-40% of fatalities at a project is Horned Lark and dozens of other species make up the other 60% with gamebirds, kinglets (both species), American kestrel among the more common species found.

So Steve to answer your last line, yes almost any bird is vulnerable. When I'm doing point counts for a project, any bird recorded on the project has some risk, even if it was seen perched, it will fly at some point. I honestly have no opinion on how good or bad Wind is relative to other aspects of power sources and we all have different viewpoints and probably for the sake of tweets should discuss off-line, but the thing that we all need is the good information. I recently saw a big newspaper story in the Columbian on the topic any MANY inaccuracies were printed in there. The only thing I have an opinion on is that everyone should be factually informed and then they can voice (and then should) their opinion as to what matters to them. This is why I wrote this is as I happen to be blessed (or cursed depending on the point of view) to be privy to all of these details that sometimes are hard for people to get access to, so trying to give the most factual info I can.

Sorry that was so long. My 200 cents...

Scott Downes
downess at charter.net
Yakima WA