Tilting at windmills: Trump laments death of bald eagle in the US ... which was really a falcon in Israel [View all]

[erronis]

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/dec/30/trump-wind-turbine-bald-eagle-falcon

A pity that Trump, or one of the 18 intelligence agencies reporting to him, did not trace the image back to its source

. . .

Late Tuesday, the US president posted an image of a dead bird beneath a turbine on social media, accompanied by the lament: "Windmills are killing all of our beautiful Bald Eagles"

The post was immediately amplified by an official White House account on X with more than a million followers.

Unfortunately for Trump's effort to sow outrage among American patriots at what he proclaimed to be an image of the national bird laid low, closer inspection reveals the photograph does not show a bald eagle and was not taken in the United States. The image actually shows a falcon that was killed at a wind farm in Israel eight years ago.

In his rush to post the image on his social media platform, Trump overlooked a pair of visual clues that might have given him pause. The first is that the bird is missing the distinctive markings of a bald eagle. The second is that the turbine blamed for its death appears to have Hebrew writing on it.

. . .