LYNDSEY Ward discusses bird and bat collisions with wind turbines (Letters, July 8) and I will expand on that.

In 2016 Exeter University published a study suggesting that 80,000 bats annually are killed by UK turbines, extrapolating to two million globally.

A Stanford 2016 study suggests that 4.1 birds per megawatt are killed by US turbines, extrapolating to 2.1 million globally.

In 2019 a University of Crete study suggested that 84 griffon vultures would be killed annually out of a population of 1,000, if the windfarms proposed for the island were to be built.

Are windfarms really green?

Geoff Moore, Alness.

ALL WELCOME

I WAS saddened on reading Lynn and Gail Cunningham’s letter (July 8) until I realised that they do not take the ire of one stick-wielding aggressive lady as representative of Scottish tourism as a whole. As a former area tourist officer for Oban, Mull and District, appointed 1973, I am well aware of an industry which exudes friendliness allied to good value (B&B then £4.50 or dinner added £50!) .

I have looked on as year on year the product has offered varied, improving opportunities for vacations of exceptional quality.

So come away one and all. A great welcome awaits you.

W Raymond Shaw, Glasgow G41.

GARDEN-BOUND

I HAVE just spent some time trying to come up with somewhere to take my two grandsons aged six and eight for a morning out one day this week.

Unfortunately, apart from the fact that most places remain closed, unlike other parts of the UK, and consequently choice is somewhat limited, those venues that are open and are suitable such as Mugdock Country Park, garden centres and the like have no toilet facilities. As we can currently send men into space and have developed robots to undertake almost any task you could imagine, surely it is not beyond the scope of human inventiveness to come up with a safe way to open something as basic as public conveniences.

Looks like another day in the back garden then!

James Martin, Bearsden.

DOC, HELP

I WAS amused by Malcolm Allan's letter (July 8) re "medical speak". My father was a GP in Dundee in the 1950s to 70s and had to get the Sunday Post every week to read The Doc as invariably, a patient would come in on Monday complaining of symptoms discussed in his column.

Steve Barnet, Gargunnock.

MY connection with the Gaelic language, the viability of which is causing concern, is limited to an occasional wee goldie (usige beatha), and a quiet “slan-ge-var” (slàinte mhath, cheers, ) and I agree with Malcolm Allan that with many different local dialects even Scottish-born will struggle with interpretation at times.

I guess most indigenous health professionals will cope with “peely wally” and “the heid staggers”, but might be challenged by the idiosyncratic “een like wee rid firrits”– which turned out to be conjunctivitis.

R Russell Smith, Kilbirnie.

MALCOLM Allan's letter about the variations in dialects within Scotland reminds me of the time when my sister-in-law was moving to Glasgow from Aberdeen and having work done on the flat she and her husband were moving into. I had to explain to her that now that she lived in Glasgow, she couldn't say that she had a man coming round to do a wee jobbie in her house.

Mary Duncan, Glasgow G69.