The end of the world is nigh!
From the AP via MSNBC:
More than 1,000 dead birds fall from sky in Ark.
The Arkansas Game and Fish Commission said Saturday more than 1,000 dead blackbirds fell from the sky in Beebe.
The agency said its enforcement officers began receiving reports about the dead birds about 11:30 p.m. Friday. The birds fell over a one-mile area of the city, and an aerial survey indicated that no other dead birds were found outside of that area, officials said.
Robby King, a wildlife officer for the agency, collected about 65 dead birds, which will be sent for testing to the state Livestock and Poultry Commission lab and the National Wildlife Health Center lab in Madison, Wis.
Commission ornithologist Karen Rowe said that similar events have occurred elsewhere and that test results “usually were inconclusive.”
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.
It’s doubtful the birds were poisoned, Rowe said, “since it only involved a flock of blackbirds and only involved them falling out of the sky.” She said a necropsy is the only way to determine if the birds were poisoned.
The city of Beebe hired U.S. Environmental Services to clean up and dispose of the dead birds.
As a bird enthusiast, this is a sad occurrence.
First of all, they are not “black birds.” They are Red-Winged Blackbirds. There is a difference. Every article about this has made the same error. Just a smidgen of effort to be accurate isn’t too much to ask.
The theories of lightening or high altitude hail seem plausible to any reasonable person.
The fireworks theory doesn’t fly. This is not the first time fireworks have been used on New Year’s Eve. And, if true, flocks of birds should be dropping every Fourth of July.
Poison has so far been ruled out. If it were poison, Red-Winged Black Birds would not be the only type of bird to be affected.
Not sure how they are determining physical trauma. I would think a bird plummeting from hundreds of feet in the sky would be pretty beat up just from the impact with the ground.
Over at MSNBC, the faithful loons can’t believe this was a natural event. It’s just more evidence to bolster their governmental conspiracy theories.
Here are a few examples from their nutty comments section:
chemtrail
I have been paying attention to these ” Chemtrails ” and they don’t look normal, Kind of milky smoke, I hope more ppl become aware of this event
This is a BAD OMEN for the coming year
Accidental exposure to a military nerve agent.
According to these tin-foil-black helicopter conspiracy wonks, “chemtrails” involve the military injecting chemical agents into vapor trails that occur in flight.
People actually take this seriously. This freak-a-zoid is a true believer, describing it as a “chemical genocide aerosol spraying operation.”
Sort of like crop dusting for humans.
Wikipedia has an entire entry devoted to this sinister military experiment.
It’s just a matter of time until “global warming” will be named the culprit.
Re-God-damned-diculous.
