Death In Arkansas, Why? Any Theories?

I think they got too close to a UFO, and it zapped 'em.

The hailstorm speculation sounds best so far. Environmental toxins would have a longer latency, and wouldn't drop a whole flock of birds at once.

I live at the edge of a busy town adjacent to the countryside 30 miles from the nearest sea and we have plenty of pigeons, crows, blackbirds, sparrows etc but for the past two weeks we have a group of seagulls accumulating in one area.

At present there are about 20 of them and they just seem to fly around in the area of their new residence or sit in groups on the street lights, I've never seen them go looking for food - and what food could they get here, there are no lakes or ponds nearby, so no fish.

What do they want to hang around here for with no food. Do they know something?

A seagull will scavenge food and eat about anything. The usually will venture in land with the approach of a major storm. Or in the winter months to acquire minerals from the soil that they need for egg bearing that they can't get from a diet of fish.

We call them flying "Rats" around the great lakes area. They as you have suggested will eat anything. So don't put too much into Flying Rats being seen somewhere other then the sea.

The town where I live is about 40 miles from Lake Erie. They come down here in the summer like biker gangs and take over the strip mall parking lots in search of french fries and other fast food debris.

A large expanse of blacktop to them is like a lake, only dry. Apparently hot blacktop and hot sand are comparable. On a "naughty night" someone I know can be persuaded to drive through them as if bowling for seagulls. Just harasssment. For real fun we let my jack russell terrier/ border collie mix out of the car to try to herd them...

Milo

...........or "rats with wings".............or "shit hawks"

I'm gonna guess instantaneous lead poisoning.

They all got suckered into buying HHO generators (they got a deal for such a large purchase). Whether they know it or not birds are subject to the laws of thermo-dynamics, and HHO scams do not work for them either. The flight mechanisms of the birds failed and they crashed to earth.

I was going to post this because it happened about 5 miles from where I live. Interesting facts that I know...

1) There were no storms or precipitation of any kind in the area.

2) There were lots of fireworks around midnight (although I've never heard of this type of event post 4th of July)

3) This happened ONE DAY AFTER 80-100k fish turned up dead (source National Public Radio)

Makes one wonder...

This is actually very scary stuff.

The death of both the birds and the fish is by species, as the fish article pointed out. It's harder to tell with the birds (think a big flock of blackbirds) , but the report says other species of fish in the area were not affected. So the usual suspect - chemical contamination - is ruled out.

Whatever killed them, it is genetically targeting one species and causing a massive kill. This is like an extermination effect.

I don't know, there are quite a few farmers that live around me who'd love to see blackbirds and starlings drop from the sky. Starlings can get pretty obnoxious.

Perhaps someone has found a means of targeting a specific species of birds. Then again, the two do often flock together. Maybe it was just coincidence.

Stress? It is known that a lot of fireworks when let off all together, like at new years eve, cause stress in birds?

Xanasax

Well, clearly someone is trying to send a message here. But what? These are all reportedly red-winged blackbirds. Agelaius phoeniceus. But why this particular species? And why Arkansas?

If we take Agelaius phoeniceus + Arkansas and rearrange the letters, we come up with "A panacea - lease sushi rugs. Oink!" Obviously this is a highly enlightened message from porcine extraterrestrial visitors who kindly stopped in to guide our future development and communicated in the only way they knew how.

Probably the re-entry of that Chinese rocket launched off the California coast line killed these birds.

On a more serious note, there's a lot of things that I'd like to know before speculating as to what caused the mass death. Was this all one species of bird, implying a possible migratory tie in. Was any of the birds banded? This will help to identify an origin for these birds. Do the birds have any visible death wounds? What necropsy results are there?

Bright light in sky frightens minority workers. Update on our premium channel!

I could only guess the specifics, but probably not related to the fish incident that has also happened in the same state. (Grouping "within a mile" would not seem reasonable if poisoned by the fish.)

I suspect that just like the "mysterious plant deaths" around October last year, the final decission will be "human interaction with nature" having an adverse impact on a specific local area.

I have seen concussion from tree blasting kill birds nearby, so the fireworks hypothesis seems credible (if there were air blast fireworks in the area at time) but even this seems strange as there have been fireworks displays worldwide for years without such environmental issues being commonly known.

Let's see what the scientists find.

Remember that window where the bad guys were locked up in that Superman movie. All those poor birds flew into it.

Interestingly it did NOT happen to birds or fish in Clyde, OHIO.

Milo

Not too long ago 150.000 civilians died (Iraq) from a course known to all. Investigations with no satisfactory results for the survivors were carried out but nobody really cares or cared. Pretty birds seem to be more touching.

I close my case and hope that these poor animals didn't suffer too long. They were possibly dead when they hit the ground and not interrogated while doing so.

I wish some of our species would just drop dead. As I understand, this incident was a deliberate poisoning gone wrong and the reactions are completely overboard. You watch the religious fanatics milking this for all it's worth.

In complete disgust but still full of hope, Ky.

The intentional poisoning is probably not far off. Arkansas offers very little protection to animals in terms of cruelty prevention (I came from New York where you'll spend more time in prison for killing your cat/dog than another human... joking but it is close). Consequently, this state seems to breed some people with little care for animals. (I've personally lost 5 cats in the past 4 years...) It is sickening.

News update: NPR just stated all the birds had internal bleeding.

I just heard on the news that poisoning was ruled out because 17 of the birds had empty stomachs. They say they are thinking about lightning or fireworks at this point.

I guess a flock of a thousand blackbirds is not unusual in Arkansas, it seems like a lot to fall out of the sky at once.

There were tons of fireworks. Would that have caused the internal bleeding? (or maybe that was the crashing at the end)

It is pretty unusual, I've never heard of it.

NPR did report the 100k fish that died the day before the birds was due to disease, which scares the bejesus out of me.

Yeh. I'm assuming your local authorities are covering the disease base with the birds as well, but that will take a few days probably. The viruses that cause bleeding and sudden death are.. nasty. But the business of falling out of the sky en masse does not really fit a viral epidemic either.

Unless the spread of disease in a flock is very different from human communities, you would expect sickness to spread at least somewhat gradually through a flock, and the sick ones would be laying low, not flying off, and they'd be dying on the usual clock of these viruses, that take a certain time to spread through the body and be fatal. That is, in a normal pattern of epidemiology. Experimental exposure (all exposed at once) you could get every bird dying at the same time I guess.

I think you're right, that internal bleeding could be caused by crashing to the ground as well as by explosions. So if there was something to cause the flock to lose consciousness, they may simply have died on impact. Fireworks could have played a role. Could fireworks have driven the unfortunate flock higher than they normally fly? - perhaps altitude effects would contribute to the shock and so they became unconscious and fell....

"(I've personally lost 5 cats in the past 4 years.."

And, do you have any idea how these feline friends of yours met with their demise? They must not have been house cats. Are you suggesting that some Arkansas redneck used them for target practice?

I come from a long line of Arkansas dog shooters, but never killed any cats. They never tried to eat our cattle like the dogs did.

And, Arkies don't poison fish for no reason, either. They catch 'em and eat 'em.

_{Sits back, waits.}

No a cow is little big for our small feline friends we keep as pets to take down. But they will get into the garbage and make a mess. Have seen them shot at for that. That doesn't bother me. If your going to keep a pet then see that it does not bother your neighbors.

If the fireworks startled the birds from their roost for the evening. Close proximity to the fireworks exploding the percussion could have caused internal injuries. The percussion forces could have knocked many out. Injuries due to hitting the ground. Or left them senseless to fly into things.

You guys and your conspiracy theory's. New Years Eve you think a red neck is going to be sober enough to knock a thousand birds out of the air.

I know a bunch of drunk red necks got together with baseball bats and used the birds as batting practice as they flew around. At last internal injuries solved.

Did man cause this? Most likely. Can we do anything about it? Sure we can stop celebrating with fireworks make them totally illegal. While were at it maybe we should stop using cars. I wonder how many animals have been hit by cars. Heck maybe we shouldn't even get out of bed in the morning. We might step on our pet's tail.

Let it and the birds die in peace. Shit happens.

And, do you have any idea how these feline friends of yours met with their demise?

I have indoor/outdoor cats. They spend most of their time indoors and a few hours each day playing, exploring, or otherwise doing whatever it is cats do outside. Two of them just disappeared. One was shot, repeatedly, recovered, severely burned, recovered, then was shot again and found him dead on the porch. Two died horrific deaths vomiting blood and such. In my view, one death in such a manner might just be a strange occurrence, but two spells out something intentional (poisoning).

I'm not trying to lump all Arkies into a single category. I'm just saying the level of animal cruelty is beyond what I've seen elsewhere.

Sorry to hear about how your cats died. There are cruel, sick people everywhere. And, I'm sure Arkansas has it's share, or more. There's a big difference between humanely dispatching an animal and torture.

We are "stray cat central" in my neighborhood here in Arizona. My mother-in-law insists on feeding them all, and the word is out. We have about 10 "guests" at the moment.

My brother, who still lives in rural Arkansas collects stray dogs "dumped" by city dwellers on his road. He has 10-12 at the moment. (We don't raise beef cattle there any more)

Not too long ago 150.000 civilians died (Iraq) from a course known to all.......but nobody really cares or cared. Pretty birds seem to be more touching.

Very interesting you should say that ky.When one looks at mans scientific achievements e.g. man walking on the moon, the progress in computers, even refrigeration, etc, etc. Man still cannot live together in peace with one another..........haven't scientists worked that one out yet??????

What is so difficult about that.........One would think it should be relatively easy!!!!

The moment I regretted this sentence, it was to late for editing, I had to leave that there. I think I will refrain from getting into this subject so not to spoil this thread with political statements. There is enough crap going on as it stands.

Die Gedanken sind Frei, Ky.

Touche

Reading the latest Google article, they suffered from internal injuries, so as a guess I would speculate that when they took off in the dark, possibly due to fireworks exploding, they did so in large numbers and collided with each other in the dark, some suffering fatal internal injury?

Regards JD.

I belong to a group who shoot small firework shows. We have had small mass bird kills where birds roosting in nearby trees have been startled by our first aerial salute shot and flown into our shooting space and subsequently killed by fireworks. Some of our larger fireworks contain over a pound of black powder.

This past fourth of July we found over 90 grackles the next day during cleanup. We saw them flying into a grove of trees about a hundred yards upwind from where we were setting up our show. We figured they spooked and flew down wind to make a fast escape but wound up right over our guns.

CG

TOo bad your grackles didn't have the decency to fly a few states away before dying?

Milo

Sounds like an inverted Alfred Hitchcock thriller, to me...

Too much to drink?

So far I am going with the earth belching up some gas. Everything else would require a "Harry Potter villian". The thing off of the CA coast resembled a rocket launch because of the plume shape expected by an accelerating rocket which will be wide at the base and much narrower as it gains velocity.

Both of the "kills" could have been directed microwave energy. As at certain frequencies/duration and intensities would tend to be species selective to a point.

There was another bird kill reported in Louisiana. Not far from the town of Morganza near the Atchafalaya River.

Check out this link from the Baton Rouge paper.

http://www.2theadvocate.com/news/112843019.html

I see it's not uncommon after all, then. Very interesting article, thanks.

Interesting article and somewhat troubling at the same time. I was just reading an article from Chile that reported massive bird kills prior to a 7.5 earthquake south of its capital on Jan. 11, 2011. Could these birds be our "canary" and actually be an omen of a potential larger earthquake. An earthquake expert at UCLA has a theory of earthquake predictions based on tremors (like those at Guy, Arkansas). Keilis-Borok has been gaining respect with his earthquake predictions and modeling.

The fact that bird kills are getting more widespread and there is an increase in fore-shocks or tremors is a good reason to avoid those big buildings that may collapse. I am not sure if we should just warn people in the area to take all PRECAUTIONS to minimize human carnage or if yelling loudly is just a chicken little approach. Yelling doesn't hurt as much as falling bricks and mortar. Being wrong on this situation is not bad. Call that earthquake expert for an opinion...quickly.

Did the birds "fall" out of the sky or did they "dive" towards the earth? Some external influence may have disturbed the birds directionality center in the brain and sent them toward earth when they thought they were going horizontally.

Compare this.

Note the stories of fish and frogs falling from the sky. Fortean Times has been around a long time and has many odd and unusual reports. Explanations are not usually offered.

From The Audubon Society-Field Guide to North American Birds; "After the breeding season, the birds gather with other blackbirds in flocks sometimes numbering in the hundreds of thousands or millions and have come to be viewed as a health hazard. Attempts have been made to reduce such flocks by spraying and other methods." In my opinion someone or something thinned a flock by less than 1%. Is this cause for concern, or should we be thankful? If this was caused by the reported fireworks, could the shock wave from a delayed explosion in the water have killed the fish?

Looking at the weather that had been taking place in the vicinity of the dead birds, extrema cold, tornado's rain and snow I have to think that the flock had been caught up in this. They could have been caught in updrafts, covered in ice and lost all ability to fly. In the turbulent air they could have been pelted and battered with hail and each other. That left them with one final action, to fall out of the sky. Some with major injuries suffered before hitting the ground.

Jerrell,

I'd be cautious about any weather theories. I live about 5 miles away. I can tell you there was no noticeable precipitation of any kind at midnight where I live. It was cold, but otherwise calm.

The last report I read said they speculated that the birds were startled by the first loud explosion of a fireworks display and flew blindly into buildings, trees, mailboxes, etc.

They apparently have poor night vision.

The first report contains this:-

---------------------------SNIP--------------------------------------

The Arkansas Game and Fish Commission (AGFC) began receiving reports about dead birds at 11:30pm on New Year's Eve.

---------------------------SNIP--------------------------------------

Do many people start letting off fireworks that early on New Years Eve? There's no reason why they shouldn't of course, especially if they have something else planned for midnight.

That's exactly what makes sense to me too. It seems to be the simplest, easiest, and most likely.

The only report it would conflict with is some wildlife person's stance that the birds had internal bleeding that was inconsistent with impact trauma. (Sorry I can't cite a source, it was most likely an interview on NPR though).

One official said it was "likely lightning." Note there were no burns or that there was no lightning that night. soooo... I have no issue discrediting some of the "official's" reports.

I have a question about the poisoning theory though (yes, the timing of it all wouldn't make a very likely scenario, but I'm curious)... I'm no biologist and it's been quite some time since I've taken the class, but as I recall, don't most organisms reject a poison when ingested? I thought it was a body's natural reaction to completely void the digestive system when a poison was introduced. (I just heard numerous times how the birds' stomachs were empty and therefore wasn't poisoning. Based on what I was taught, that fact would push me harder into investigating specifically for a poison.)

What about fireworks? Here we can only buy them a few days before 4th of July (and I think Xmas this year) but anything goes... rockets... stuff that goes up in the sky and goes BOOM!! Other areas only allow ground fireworks... and as a kid, all we could have were sparklers. Were there alot of "up in the sky" fireworks?

Bill

(again I'm only a few miles away from where it happened)... In my area I saw the ground stuff starting around 11pm (sparklers and firecrackers, etc). At midnight there were 3 displays within sight from my porch with probably 2 or 3 more in earshot. It is reasonable to say there was probably some (alot?) in that area too.

No, no that can't be true. It's all a government conspiracy. Those incompetent fools in the government are just working with the "greys" to steal our precious bodily fluids. The birds and fishes are a warning sign of a future invasion! You only thought you saw fireworks, they could only do a partial mind wipe. What you actually saw was a demonstration of their trans-dimensional weapons system. Their here to steal our precious HHO technology. AAAAAAAAA

MEDIC!! MEDIC!! Corpsman?? Oh Hell! Is there a veterinarian in the house?

He's having another attack! I think it was triggered by watching an old Peter Sellers movie about B-52s and atomic bombs. We need to get him to an aid station!

What do you mean... all we got is the kid on the corner? Damn military cutbacks! If KoolAid is all we got, lets give it a try. Anybody got a quarter?

What do you mean... a DOLLAR!! Damn inflation!!

Bill

Not to top your story, but in Mesa, Arizona it's legal to sell and purchase fireworks on many corners in the city.

However, it is against the law to light them. Yep, you can buy 'em but you'd better not try to use them.

Some state legislators have been paid off to pass a law contrary to many city ordinances. Go figure.

I don't know if its just a general impression but the birds are located at the road sides? it may be only that it presents a photographic opportunity? the road is only a small area compared to the country side, do birds follow street lighting at night? what happens if the lights go out in a storm? do they try to land? there are other possibilities but they are also only speculative?

Regards JD.

In response to the birds being found along roadways or in towns. I wonder how many may be out in the woods? Haven't heard of hunters seeing any, but they may not have passed by them. Also, I heard some dead birds were found in Southwest Louisiana.

For those of you who think that mass bird deaths are uncommon, did you know that th USGS tracks these events.

For those who think that birds cannot be poisoned there's this story of a culling done in New Jersey.

With all of the latest complaints that the government wastes public funding, I wonder which of these two public services was a waste.

There is a link on post # 39 that will direct you to the USGS site that has this.

Thanks for the info. The culling was unknown to me.

I'm merely curious about the whole thing being so near to it. I'm a curious person always thinking I have a need to know.

I know it is just the paranoid bone in me, but I kind of flashed-back to one of my classes where we discussed the VERTAC superfund site (it's only about 20 miles from where the birds dropped).

According to the Seattle paper yesterday, the cause of death was the fireworks. The concussion of the explosions shook their little birdbrains apart and they just fell out of the skies.

This is similar to what (I believe) my wife calls PTSD or post traumatic stress disorder in humans. This has occured with soldiers who were exposed to roadside bombings in Iraq. They came through without exterior wounds, but suffered neurological damage to the brain from the concussion of the blast.

Bill

my wife calls PTSD or post traumatic stress

During the world wars this used to be called "shell shock" and your wife is correct in that it is now called PTSD........however this is not the only cause for PTSD in humans........there are other causes as well.

Caused by undisclosed and/or accidental pollution perhaps?

Just finished reading a report that says:

"In the past 8 months the USGS has logged 95 mass die offs. The list includes:

900 turkey vultures in the Florida Keys (starved or drowned)

4 300 ducks in Minnesota

1 500 salamander in Idaho

2 000 bats in Texas

2 700 sea birds in California (unknown cause as yet)

Generally deaths caused by viruses or parasites

Twice in 1996 100 000 ducks died in Canada from botulism

Ornithologists say cold, wet weather is often associated with mass bird deaths...........the weather was like this on the night in question.

..........and this is only in USA. Many more mass fish and bird deaths occur on a world wide basis.

...........and who cares about animals, birds and fish that maybe facing extinction???

Death In Arkansas, Why? Any Theories?

They looked at a map and saw that they were in Arkansas.

(OK, very low quality Southern joke, feel free to substitute Alabama or Georgia if you live in Arkansas)

Just come across this in uk news papers

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1344913/Animal-death-mystery-Two-MILLION-dead-fish-wash-Maryland-bay.html

Its the greys I tell you! They're slowly reforming the Earth for their migration here. Our incompetent government is working with them. The USGS link in post #55 is just our government covering up for the greys. Their trying to make it look like this is normal. This has never happened before. They even secretly changed stories in the Bible so these guys think that its a prophecy. Its not its the greys!!

Everything you know is wrong! Fight the Stupids!

Remember, Everything You Know is Wrong.

http://www.todaysthv.com/news/local/story.aspx?storyid=137071&provider=top

Interesting, I would've liked to have seen what kind of time frame that their showing with those radar images. If that was real time then that implies completely different ideas than if each frame was a peak image of an aggregate 15 minutes. Weather radar images can have almost any time frame.