A small Arkansas town might have shown the first example of that as approximately 5,000 blackbirds dropped dead from the sky last night in the early hours of the new year.
As if the incident was not strange enough, it is the second time in two years that the birds have fallen as the calendar year changes.
* * *Update:
Initially, last year's deaths were blamed on celebratory fireworks, with people thinking that the birds were startled to death.
A flash hail storm or massive lightning strikes were all discussed as possibilities as well.
All three theories have been debunked, however, as the weather was calm in Arkansas last night and police even imposed an impromptu firework ban in an effort to prevent it from happening again.
Here is a link to a news report from last year blaming the incident last year on fireworks.
Apparently, that wasn't the only mysterious incident of animal deaths last year. This article has a compilation of 26 mass animal deaths between the middle of December 2010 and January 2011. Another article concerning various mass animal deaths in early January 2011. And this article from The Atlantic has a map showing the location of mass bird deaths from January 2011.
Anything else leading up to New Years this year? Well, this town apparently had a mass death of starlings. And a December 15, 2011, incident from Southern Utah. As to the latter incident, the story notes:
Mass death events are typically defined as those in which more than 1,000 birds die, and the National Wildlife Health Center has received more than 175 reports of such events in the past decade. The triggers vary from disease and weather to trauma and starvation, but Griffin says this week's event stands out because it covered such a large area, up to 30 miles across. "I've been here 15 years, and this was the worst downing I've seen," she says.And what appears to be another mass bird death in Utah this last month, but involving starlings.
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