Arkansas game officials probe mystery of falling birds

[Raineyrocks]

http://www.cnn.com/2011/US/01/02/arkansas.falling.birds/index.html?hpt=T2

(CNN) -- Arkansas game officials hope testing scheduled to begin Monday will solve the mystery of why up to 5,000 birds fell from the sky just before midnight New Year's Eve.

The birds -- most of which were dead -- were red-winged blackbirds and starlings, and they were found within a one-mile area of Beebe, about 40 miles northeast of Little Rock, the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission said. Birds fell over about a one-mile area, the commission said in a statement.

As of Saturday, between 4,000 and 5,000 birds had been found dead, said Keith Stephens with the commission.

"Shortly after I arrived, there were still birds falling from the sky," said commission wildlife officer Robby King in the statement. He said he collected about 65 dead birds.

The commission said it flew over the area to gauge the scope of the event, and no birds were found outside of the initial one-mile area.

Karen Rowe, an ornithologist for the commission, said the incident is not that unusual and is often caused by a lightning strike or high-altitude hail.

A strong storm system moved through the state earlier in the day Friday.

"It's important to understand that a sick bird can't fly. So whatever happened to these birds happened very quickly," Rowe told CNN Radio on Sunday.

"Something must have caused these birds to flush out of the trees at night, where they're normally just roosting and staying in the treetops ... and then something got them out of the air and caused their death and then they fell to earth," Rowe added.

Officials also speculated that fireworks shot by New Year's revelers in the area might have caused severe stress in the birds. Rowe said Sunday there was evidence that large fireworks may have played a role.

"Initial examinations of a few of the dead birds showed trauma. Whether or not this trauma was from the force of hitting the ground when they fell or from something that contacted them in the air, we don't know," Rowe said.

The dead birds will be sent for testing to labs at the Arkansas Livestock and Poultry Commission and the National Wildlife Health Center in Wisconsin.

The necropsies will begin Monday, Stephens said, and the findings should be available sometime this week.

The city of Beebe has hired U.S. Environmental Services to begin the cleanup and dispose of the dead birds, the commission said. The firm's workers will go door-to-door and pick up birds still in yards and on rooftops.

CNN's Tina Burnside and Shelby Lin Erdman contributed to this report.

Then here is a story of lots of fish dying in Arkansas too but I think it was over 100 miles away.


http://www.cnn.com/2011/US/01/02/arkansas.fish.kill/index.html?hpt=T2

[littlehawk]

Possible lightning, chemtrail posioning or military weapon testing?

I am surprised they didn't label it Bird Flu outbreak.

[Lloyd Danforth]

A guy on TV just quipped that he often thought that 'end times' would begin in Arkansas.

[Raineyrocks]

Possible lightning, chemtrail posioning or military weapon testing?

I am surprised they didn't label it Bird Flu outbreak.

Who knows, but it's totally freaky.     It reminds me of the movie, The Core, when pigeons started falling all over dead and that movie was about the magnetic pole shift I think; so maybe that's it. 

[Raineyrocks]

A guy on TV just quipped that he often thought that 'end times' would begin in Arkansas.

Really, why Arkansas of all places?

[Raineyrocks]

Isn't Arkansas pronounced like this rcansaw?   I wonder why it is spelled so weird....

[KBCraig]

A guy on TV just quipped that he often thought that 'end times' would begin in Arkansas.

Can't possibly happen. Arkansas is at least a decade behind the rest of the country. When it's end times in Arkansas, everyone else will already be goners. 

[KBCraig]

Isn't Arkansas pronounced like this rcansaw?   I wonder why it is spelled so weird....

Ask the Francophones. Just like NH, Arkansas is full of strange place names that are English spellings of French transliterations of Indian names.

[Jim Johnson]

It looks like a flock of the redwings was caught in the middle of a fireworks celebration.
The timing of the display and the body trauma in the birds seem to fit.

[Free libertarian]

 maybe it's god flipping us the bird(s) ?

[Lloyd Danforth]

A guy on TV just quipped that he often thought that 'end times' would begin in Arkansas.

Can't possibly happen. Arkansas is at least a decade behind the rest of the country. When it's end times in Arkansas, everyone else will already be goners. 

Tennessee came in second.

[CJS]

 Google "fish kills" and "mass bird deaths" , this is happening globally and the scale of it is actually scary ... as is the lack of reporting on it.

[KBCraig]

Google "fish kills" and "mass bird deaths" , this is happening globally and the scale of it is actually scary ... as is the lack of reporting on it.

All you can tell from reading the news, is that it's being reported. A massive increase in news reports does not equal a massive increase in the number of events.

Remember "the summer of the shark"? In 2001, shark attacks were all over the news, and it was hyped as if it was the most dangerous year ever. In fact, there were fewer attacks and less than half the deaths of the year before.

[MaineShark]

Who knows, but it's totally freaky.     It reminds me of the movie, The Core, when pigeons started falling all over dead and that movie was about the magnetic pole shift I think; so maybe that's it. 

Pigeons don't die in response to changes in magnetism.  Neither do folks with pacemakers.  The magnetic field of the planet can't be stopped and started.  I don't think there was a truthful thing in that entire movie.

Joe

[CJS]

All you can tell from reading the news, is that it's being reported. A massive increase in news reports does not equal a massive increase in the number of events.

An excellent point , as I have said to friends many times in regards to " west Nile virus" which is what was called St Louis Encephalitis in the 70's and early 80's and not some new scary disease the govt. needs to save us from.

Also I have gone out of my way to ignore main stream media so my saying something is under reported is not fair .