“...likely have died ...
IOWs you don’t really know and this whole thing is made up speculative whinging.”
Well, you can make a pretty good calculated guess on the part of the ornithologists, as Lake Michigan is indeed mostly frozen over, and if I were a bird and couldn’t find a lot of open water, and couldn’t easily fly off from ice, I’d probably be pretty hard up too, and hungry. This isn’t a joke for the birds, I’m sure.
Use logic here. Why might they be dying. Too much ice on the lake might be the most logical guess, now wouldn’t it. Even a layman should be able to figure that out. I live in Chicagoland and know the lake pretty well. It’s been almost all ice. This past winter has been a tough one on everyone, including the birds. If I have to see one more mound of ice, I’ll go stir crazy, more than I already am now. I WANT SPRING!
Is it safe to say you don’t want the birds to starve to death? How touching.
Life is never a joke for any animal. Not one minute of it. Ever.
This isn’t a joke for the birds, I’m sure......This is natural selection before your eyes. Birds find it easy to thrive most years in winter when they should be going south. Comes along a winter like this and those who got adjusted die off, thereby cleansing the gene pool back to closer what they were supposed to do. Doves around here are in the same predicament. They were hanging out year long and this winter can’t find food (except from those idiots who are throwing out food for the birds). Straightens the gene pool out, a little, to get rid the abberations.