USA Today - A mysterious event that caused thousands of red-wing blackbirds to rain down from the sky New Year's Eve in the Arkansas town of Beebe may have occurred when loud noises or fireworks frightened a flock that roosts in a neighborhood, causing them to fly into buildings and other obstacles, a state ornithologist said. But others still think weather could have played a role.
Preliminary necropsies on the dead birds by the state Livestock and Poultry Commission "showed trauma," said Karen Rowe, Arkansas Game and Fish Commission ornithologist. "The birds obviously hit something very hard and had hemorrhages." Beyond that, all the birds were healthy.
The state is also performing chemical and disease testing, but the results will take a week.
Neighbors reported five to 12 booming noises in the eastern part of Beebe, a community of 5,000 northeast of Little Rock. "They reported it sounding like a cannon or transformer exploding," but officials are still investigating to find out what the noises were, Rowe said.
The flock then rose from its roost and tried to fly away, but possibly because of fireworks in the sky "they naturally wouldn't want to go up high," she said. "They were below the roof line, so they were hitting houses, mail boxes, chimneys and walls."
Blackbirds have very poor night vision.
The first calls about the incident came in at about 11 p.m. on New Year's Eve, according to Keith Stephens, with the Game and Fish Commission.
"They told us there were birds falling out of the sky. After we verified that this wasn't some kind of prank, one of our wildlife officers went over there and sure enough, there were birds falling," he said.
The Department of Emergency Management tested the air and found nothing amiss, so the state isn't putting out any health warnings, he said.
Many theories being floated about causes of the die off can be discounted, said Dan Cristol, a professor of biology at the Institute for Integrative Bird Behavior Studies at the College of William & Mary in Virginia. The birds couldn't have eaten a fast-acting pesticide because they would have eaten it during the day and died long before they began to roost at night, he said. A slower-acting pesticide wouldn't have affected them all at the same time. A hail storm is unlikely because they would have had to be flying for that to happen, and at that hour red-wing blackbirds are asleep.
Rough weather had hit the state earlier Friday, but the worst of it was well east of Beebe by the time the birds started falling, said Chris Buonanno, a forecaster with the National Weather Service in North Little Rock.
But one expert said he can't discount weather as a cause.
"Thousands of birds encountered something, whether it was a lighting strike or hail or something, and that caused the trauma and death," said Robert Meese, an avian ecologist at the University of California-Davis. "I don't see any way that they could have flown into obstructions, because then the birds should have been at the base of the objects. ... This was a scattering."
The number of dead blackbirds is more than 3,000, Rowe said. "Environmental Services says they picked up approximately 2,000 birds." There were others they couldn't reach, she said, and "scavengers probably carried off quite a bit — if you're a cat, it's Christmas dinner."
Red-wing blackbirds are native to North America and gather in large flocks in the winter, generally settling near food sources for weeks at a time, said Mike Parr of the American Bird Conservancy in Washington, D.C.
The number of birds that died Friday is high, he noted, but "to put the number in perspective, windows, communication towers, power lines and wind turbines kill tens of millions of birds each year, probably hundreds of millions."
In an unrelated event, a major fish kill was reported on the Arkansas River last week, Stephens said. Approximately 80,000 to 100,000 dead freshwater drum were found along a 17-mile stretch of the river, about 100 miles from Beebe, between the Ozark Lock and Dam and a point due south of Hartman.
State officials believe the fish kill was disease related. Specimens have been sent to state labs for testing.
The incidents — coming during a traditionally slow news period — made for a wild weekend for state Game and Fish staffers.
"It's the craziest thing I've ever experienced and I've been doing this for 25 years," Stephens said. "I'll bet you I've had 100 calls today, I've done 25 interviews. I did Al-Jazeera live last night."
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