Fireworks may have caused Arkansas bird deaths (BBC)

[eppur_se_muova]

US scientists believe fireworks may have caused thousands of birds to fall from the sky over an Arkansas town on New Year's Eve.

Karen Rowe, of the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission, said the red-winged blackbirds probably flew low to avoid explosions and collided with objects.

However, she stopped short of declaring the mystery solved, saying further tests on the dead birds are planned.

Officials say more than 3,000 birds fell over the city of Beebe.

The few that survived their fall stumbled around like drunken revellers, witnesses said.
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more: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-12105157

[hedgehog]

1. Could it have been a two step process?

Step 1 - Something disturbed the roosting birds causing them to fly up into the night sky and/or fireworks disoriented a flock in flight

Step 2 - Disoriented birds flew into objects or even into the ground, causing the blunt force trauma that killed them.

[KeepItReal]

2. Unless Arkansans are popping airbust nukes, I'm not buying it

"colliding with objects"!?!? They are birds, not lemmings.

"However, she stopped short of declaring the mystery solved, saying further tests on the dead birds are planned." Er, then why lead to speculation on fireworks as the cause?

[FirstLight]

3. Personally, I think it is bigger than they are letting on,and we will see more

Corexit from the gulf.

either the birds migrated through some concentration of toxin...or the recent weather patterns has brought this toxin inland...

[WinkyDink]

8. Not a toxin; dead/internal injuries from an impact prior to the ground. AKA:

Govt testing of new crowd-control device.

[Vinnie From Indy]

9. Bingo!

I have thought is was Corexit all along. Maybe a tanker flying that night was leaking Corexit over land. There are many scenarios, but I would discount the frightened birds colliding with objects. If that were true, there should be many instances over the last two thousand years that fireworks have been used of mass bird casualties.

[ret5hd]

4. Bullshit, and i can prove it:

Most years in our city tens of thousands of grackles converge on trees in the downtown area. Loud and messy, the merchants get the city to try to get the birds to move on, an exercise in futility as the birds "move on" when they are damn good and ready. The city hires crews to go around and scare the birds with noises, sirens, etc. Even shotgun "blanks" have been used.

Not once has there been a bird kill like this, even tho they are purposely trying to scare the birds from their night time roosting places.

[Desertrose]

5. Feeble attempt at spin. I'm not buying.

Birds ...ALL those birds...colliding with objects? Good grief. We aren't all that stupid.

[WinkyDink]

6. And they were flying AT NIGHT because? And ONLY this species because? (Next: "It was a lone

firecracker with a grudge.")

[appal_jack]

7. ah yes, of course

Of course the explanation of fireworks being the cause makes sense. That's why thousands of birds all fall out of the sky every New Year's, and every 4th of July too.

What's that you say, they don't?

Well it couldn't possibly be some toxic cloud or weapons test that the government would like to hide could it?

-app

[guitar man]

10. Possible explanation at this link

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=youtube_gdata_player&v=bMltvlqEM54

:D

[NightWatcher]

11. What about the thousand dead birds from Louisiana?

http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_thelookout/another-large-bird-kill-reported-this-time-in-louisiana

[alfredo]

12. Fireworks in our neighborhood spooked the Starlings in

the trees in our neighborhood.

BTW, Red Wing Blackbirds can be found in the company of other black birds. Grackles can be found with Starlings too.