US President Donald Trump has blamed wind turbines for killing America’s iconic bald eagles in a year-end social media post, renewing his long-running opposition to wind energy.
However, fact checks revealed that the image shared in the post was neither taken in the United States nor did it show a bald eagle.
In the Truth Social post, Trump shared a zoomed-in image of a bird lying beneath a wind turbine and wrote that “windmills are killing all of our beautiful Bald Eagles”.
The bald eagle is the national bird of the United States and features prominently on official symbols, currency and military insignia. Trump’s post was later amplified by an official White House account and the US Department of Energy on X.
AFP found that the same photo appeared in a 2017 report by Israeli newspaper Haaretz, which credited Israel Nature and Parks Authority and identified the bird as a falcon. Hebrew writing was also visible on the turbine.
Two independent ornithologists consulted by AFP confirmed that the bird was not a bald eagle, which is native to North America and known for its large size and white head.
“It is definitely not a bald eagle,” said Ben Sheldon, a professor of ornithology at the University of Oxford, who suggested it was likely a Eurasian kestrel.
Critics seized on the error, with California Governor Gavin Newsom mocking Trump’s misidentification on social media.
While hundreds of thousands of birds die annually from wind turbines in the US, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has noted that such deaths are minimal compared with those caused by buildings or domestic cats.
