Downtown Austin shut down after bird deaths

msnbc.msn.com ^ | 1/8/2007 | AP

[call meVeronica]

AUSTIN, Texas - Police shut down 10 blocks of businesses in the heart of downtown Austin early Monday after dozens of birds were found dead. Experts were testing for any sort of environmental contaminant or gas or chlorine leaks that might have killed off the animals, police spokeswoman Toni Chovanetz said. There were no reports of any humans harmed, but a 10-block stretch of the main north-south route through downtown, several side streets and all buildings in the area were blocked off and expected to remain off-limits until about noon, Chovanetz said. The bird carcasses were found overnight along Congress Avenue between Sixth and Eighth streets. The street closure Monday morning stretched from the front of the state Capitol to a section of the Colorado River known as Town Lake. There was no immediate word on whether the Capitol would be affected Monday, the day before the legislative session was to begin.

[call meVeronica]

It will be interesting to watch what this turns out to be.

[JoanneSD]

Presidents Bush's fault

[jdm]

Another gas leak?

[DBrow]

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1764068/posts

Hope these are not related.

[Calpernia]

ping

[Flavius]

obviously NY City birds have more tolerance for bad odor vs the Austin birds

[johnny7]

Was Helen Thomas in town?

[rvoitier]

If this turns out to be a malicious situation where either an illegal alien or terrorist who walked across the Mexican border since Jan. 2001...you're damn right it's his fault.

[Ditter]

The PBR (Professional Bullriding) has been in NYC this weekend, could it be the smell of bull sh*t that NYers are smelling? They obviously don't recognize the smell of political bs, maybe they can smell the real thing.

[RightResponse]

When the canary dies.......

[NavyCanDo]

Maybe some little boy got a RED RIDER RANGE MODEL BB GUN from Santa.

[Beagle8U]

The article doesn't say what kind of birds were found dead.

Seeing as it is in a downtown area my guess is that a exterminator put out some poison grain to kill feral pidgins and sparrows that were causing problems at one of the buildings.

[Arrowhead1952]

Here is the thread I posted earlier today from the KLBJ radio site. There are several replies with more info posted thru the replies.

A strange discovery this morning in downtown Austin. (TX)

[Tenacious 1]

They didn't say.

Pigeons or Grackles?

I suspect that a business owner that is having to fix his/her building due to the weight of the bird droppings has taken measures to protect his asset in the future.

Since birds ignore the posted signs about where to eat and poop, they are probably eating something tainted with Strychnine (sp?).

[ExtremeUnction]

Seeing as it is in a downtown area my guess is that a exterminator put out some poison grain to kill feral pidgins and sparrows that were causing problems at one of the buildings.

You're right. It's not unusual for building maintenance folks to put poison on a roof to reduce the pigeon population. It may not be legal, but I think that it is fairly common.

[Halls]

I'm in Dallas and going there Feb 3rd. I hope it is nothing serious.

[Rick.Donaldson]

I did some research on this, and SEVERAL articles (none posted here) state the types of birds as being pigeons, grackles, and sparrows.

[RonDog]

Indexing RELATED threads:

Downtown Austin shut down after bird deaths
	Posted by call meVeronica On News/Activism 01/08/2007 7:51:22 AM PST · 16 replies · 681+ views msnbc.msn.com ^ | 1/8/2007 | AP
A strange discovery this morning in downtown Austin. (TX)
	Posted by Arrowhead1952 On News/Activism 01/08/2007 4:39:56 AM PST · 145 replies · 4,037+ views KLBJ News ^ | 1/8/2007 | n/a

[sasha123]

here's an update:

http://www.kxan.com/Global/story.asp?S=5904817

[Old Professer]

Well, the weather there is 53F, clear skies, low humidity (35%) and light and variable winds, mostly calm; an upper air chart might likely show a near surface inversion which would would tend to hold any escaping gasses down close to the ground.

There is no sounding on Unisys for Austin but the rest of Texas has a strong inversion up to about 2,000 meters above the surface.