Posted on 01/02/2011 8:33:08 AM PST by edpc
BEEBE, Ark. – Wildlife officials are trying to determine what caused more than 1,000 blackbirds to die and fall from the sky over an Arkansas town.
The Arkansas Game and Fish Commission said Saturday that it began receiving reports about the dead birds about 11:30 p.m. the previous night. The birds fell over a 1-mile area of Beebe, and an aerial survey indicated that no other dead birds were found outside of that area.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
It's an old English nursery rhyme from about 1745.
One article speculated the following:
The birds showed physical trauma, said Rowe, who surmised that “the flock could have been hit by lightning or high-altitude hail.”
The agency also said another possibility is that New Year’s Eve revelers shooting off fireworks in the area could have startled the birds from their roost and caused them to die from stress.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/40874105/ns/us_news-environment/
I call B.S.
I agree with you. There are Starlicide compounds that have been used to keep these roving marauders at bay. Our KS beef feedlot Industry sustains substantial losses from these roving flocks of birds.
If a few hundred or thousands of these Grackles (Starlings) decide to nest in the trees of your neighborhood, the ground will be covered in bird poop, and they will continue to nest there for years to come.
The only way to get them to nest elsewhere is for you and all your neighbors to conduct a campaign of noise every evening for several days. Banging pots/pans, snapping big belts, banging tools together, etc.
It will scare the birds from nesting there, and the next year, they will nest in another location, far from your neighborhood.
We did this about 10 years ago, and the birds have only started to return in the past year. It’s almost time for another noise campaign.
The then-wife and I had only been "verbally" abused while walking
in the same area.
A neighbor said he used to have a tree abutting the driveway.
Grackles/Starlings would nest, doodooing up his car, so he
bought a bag of Brazilian nuts or the like, and a slingshot. The
nut was big enough to carom off the branches, encouraging
the flock to leave en mass.
I agree with your call.
If these were starlings, one lightning bolt could easily get a thousand of them. They are smart and are pests.
One of the great things about this place is if you toss out the right line, folks will really run with it.
Pi are round cake are square!
Was what I was thinking. Birds like to ride thermals, maybe they rode on the wrong one.
Can't remember the original events that sparked poetry, though.
See: when hugh manatee attacks
What is the first bird pictured in post #18? We gets lots of those around these parts.
If the good citizens of Beebe are called what I suspect they're called, well, there's your answer. But, I guess they could be Beebeians. Beebites? Beebsters?
Nah, they're Beebers.
“Global Warming” caused them to freeze to death in midair. Yeah, that’s the ticket.
This is not an uncommon event in severe cold weather.
Hell, even Penguins freeze to death and they are suited to cold weather.
“June 16, 2010: Nearly 500 rare African Penguins have died in the past 24 hours as a result of extremely cold weather in South Africa’s Eastern Cape province.”
I hear the beebers are stuned by these developments.
In fact, didn’t a bunch of strong storms with tornadoes go through earlier in the day in parts of Arkansas before the birds fell? Is it possible that the tornado sucked in a whole bunch of birds and they fell down many miles away after the storm passed?
Good point. Since the title states: "More than 1000..", then the answer must be greater than 41.666...
“They’re dropping out of the sky like bags of cement!”
“The rest of the story just get wierd!”
“As God as my witness, I thought turkeys could fly!”
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