Why are thousands of dead birds suddenly falling from the sky? [Io9 Backgrounder]

This week, 5,000 blackbirds fell from the skies over Arkansas, followed by 500 more in Louisiana. And now it’s happening in Sweden too . You’ve got to wonder what the hell is occurring. We’ll explain.

Let’s quickly review the facts. Previous to midnight on New Year’s Eve, anywhere from 1,000 to 5,000 red-winged blackbirds and starlings fell from the sky within a one-mile area over town of Beebe, Arkansas. The previous few days have also seen a mass fish kill, through which an estimated 100,000 drum fish washed up on a twenty-mile stretch near the city of Ozark, Arkansas, that’s about 125 miles faraway from Beebe.

And then, around 500 red-winged blackbirds, starlings, and grackles fell to their deaths over a quarter-mile stretch of highway near Labarre, Louisiana, that’s 360 miles from Beebe and 450 from Ozark. And then last night, hundreds of what were possibly jackdaws fell to the ground world wide Falkirk, Sweden.

So, now that we’ve got the complete facts, what on this planet is causing some of these animals to die?

Some of the more fanciful interpretation have put these forward as signs of the Apocalypse, undoubtedly as the first act of some macabre play of surprising death and destruction for you to lead to December 2012. But there are perfectly rational explanations for all of this. But I’ll provide you with a warning now – the explanations may well be scientific, but they’re not exactly likely, and they sure as hell aren’t elegant or logically pleasing.

The very first thing to realise is that there isn’t one single cause for all this because this isn’t one connected event. These are completely separate events which are, consistent with all experts and investigators, entirely unrelated. Indeed, there’s no great mystery behind the 100,000 dead fish . The indisputable fact that only drum fish died means the reason for death was localized in a particular species, which rules out pollutants or toxins. Some as yet unidentified disease killed the fish, that is something that happens every now and then. This particular fish kill is more severe than most, to ensure, nonetheless it’s still not unprecedented.

The birds are a bit more complicated. We’re still waiting on analyses of the dead birds to be able to solve the mystery, but there are already several theories to account for the deaths. To this point all we know obviously is that the Arkansas birds showed signs of blunt-force trauma, although it’s possible that was just brought on by slamming into the ground.

Weather may be the culprit. High-altitude hail or lightning may need hit the birds, which caused them to fall from the sky. Arkansas Game and Fish Commission ornithologist Karen Rowe says a severe weather system did move through Arkansas on New Year’s Eve, so it’s not impossible. The best problem is the birds don’t seem to have any of the telltale bruises or injuries that a weather-related explanation would cause.

Thankfully, we will be able to probably rule out disease and toxins. Arkansas experts say a disease would take down so much more than only one isolated flock – and no, the second group of dead birds in Louisiana isn’t enough to make disease look like a viable possibility. An identical thinking goes for poisoning – if that were the case, birds could be falling in every single place Arkansas, and that just isn’t the case. The Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality tested the realm for any air toxins, but the skies are officially clean.

One thing to keep in mind is what day and time the incident occurred: near midnight on New Year’s Eve. Many people mark the beginning of the brand new year with fireworks, and it’s possible these celebrations caused this nasty accident. Arkansas Game and Fish Commission spokesman Keith Stephens says the commission currently favors this theory, as fireworks that were shot off in exactly the appropriate area near the birds once they were roosting can have scared them, creating a traumatic stress event.

Obviously, birds don’t usually fall from the sky when fireworks are shot off, so what would have happened here? We do know that birds are typically more highly concentrated in rural areas, meaning one big fireworks blast in exactly the inaccurate area would have terrified thousands of birds unexpectedly.

This would have happened at night, when birds are roosting on the ground – and if this did indeed happen when the birds were asleep, experts say the trauma would had been enough to kill them, as t he terrified birds frantically flew into each other inside the heavy night fog. Witnesses have since come forward to assert they saw somebody setting off industrial-grade fireworks near the roosting area, which would seem to back up that theory.

For what it’s worth, a number of Beebe residents don’t buy that theory , saying they’ve shot up loads of fireworks before and nothing like this has ever happened. That would well be true, but the article is that whatever caused this was staggeringly unlikely, and that each one of the theories require a really unlikely confluence of factors. That’s the issue with vastly improbable events – their explanations don’t are usually terribly logical.

So then, the fish were done in by disease, and the Arkansas birds were probably killed either by a freak weather event or some fireworks. That leaves the birds in Louisiana and Sweden. It’s where those that like their explanations to be neat and tidy are probably going to be not up to thrilled…because these items most likely had nothing to do with either of the alternative two events.

Officials with the Louisiana Department of Fisheries and Wildlife have stated that lots of the 500 birds found near Labarre had broken beaks and wings, at the side of other signs of violent injury that probably weren’t simply resulting from hitting the ground. Probable, the birds hit some power lines while flying at night, that can occasionally happen because blackbirds and starlings don’t have particularly good night vision.

So that’s that then…or it’d be, if a different bird death event hadn’t happened last night in Sweden. Again, it really is unusual for this to occur, particularly so soon after two other similar incidents. Still, over again the causes themselves don’t appear all that onerous to see – the birds were likely traumatized by an unusual event, just like the Arkansas blackbirds and the fireworks. It’s strictly the timing of all this it is weird.

Indeed, this entire thing is odd. It’s far type of hard to just accept that three freak events occurred in a 500-mile area within five days of each other…and it really was just a peculiar coincidence. Fish do sometimes die off, and 100,000 dead isn’t all that unusual if an extremely virulent disease hits. Blackbirds and starlings sometimes hit power lines after they’re flying at night, which will then cause mass chaos in their flock that may leave hundreds of birds dead. And, though it’s slightly less common than either of those two events, birds can occasionally be so terrified by loud fireworks that the full flock suffers a catastrophic stress event.

Is any of this likely? Absolutely not. But that’s the joys thing about living in the world (well, unless you’re a blackbird or drum fish) – whenever you wait around long enough, deeply improbable things will eventually happen. And that is all very definitely deeply improbable.

Previously on io9:
Over a thousand dead black birds rain down on Arkansas town
100,000 fish wash up 100 miles faraway from massive bird die-off
Hundreds of dead black birds rain down from the sky in Louisiana
Taiwanese news coverage of the Southern USA bird die-offs is expectedly deranged

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This post is tagged: death and destruction, indisputable fact, labarre louisiana, rational explanations, red winged blackbirds, signs of the apocalypse