Don Quixote said of windmills (mistaking them for giants) that “the removal of so foul a brood from off the face of the earth is a service God will bless.” Though contemporary attitudes toward this form of renewable energy are more favorable, we followed the Don’s lead by mounting up and setting out to look at some local windmills, with a wind turbine or two thrown in for good measure.

Windmills once were widely used to pump water or mill grain, but today often survive mainly as ornaments in the landscape, iconic and nostalgic reminders of the past. Wind turbines, in contrast, aspire to be a functional part of the present and future by converting wind energy into electrical power.

The windmill pictured on this page is located in the play area at County Farm Park. Its blades rotate in a gentle breeze, theatrically dramatic against a backdrop of scattered clouds in a winter sky.

On a different day, at the corner of Ann Arbor-Saline and Pleasant Lake roads, we saw the Creature Conservancy’s large windmill, powered by a brisk wind, spinning insanely fast, its blades melded together in a speed blur.

Further out, we found the Saline Depot Museum, at 402 N. Ann Arbor St. hosting a stocky wooden Eclipse windmill with red-tipped blades. The Saline Area Historical Society also operates a second museum at the Rentschler Farm on Michigan Ave.; there it displays a Saline Standard Windmill, made by a local company that opened for business in the late 1800s.

On a less windy day, driving along Ellsworth, we noticed a skeletal windmill standing motionless, a melancholy beauty among stark winter trees, in a residential side lot at the corner of Deer Glen Dr. Even more prominent is the Unitarian Universalist Church’s wind turbine near the corner of Ellsworth and Ann Arbor-Saline, with its elegantly simple three-bladed propeller design.

On the north side, Skyline High School is topped by a vertical axis wind turbine that spins like twisted metal ribbon candy whirling in the breeze. The structure’s existence could be justified as a work of art even if it lacked any utilitarian purpose.

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Jeff Masters, director of meteorology for the Weather Underground, informs us that Ann Arbor’s winds most often blow in from the west, southwest, or northwest. Perhaps half a dozen times a year, a strong northwest wind that passes over the open water of Lake Michigan may send an inch or so of lake-effect snow all the way to Ann Arbor. But Masters explains that 90 percent of our snowfall arrives on heavy wet weather from the southwest, or Alberta Clippers from the northwest.

Masters says March is our windiest month, followed by April, December, and November in that order. Wind is usually stronger during the day, starting about ten or eleven in the morning and continuing until about an hour before sunset, when winds die down because the sun is no longer heating the earth. But nighttime storms can ride in on strong winds that howl in the night. The dog hides under the bed.