Wildlife officials in Arkansas and Louisiana have turned to the University of Georgia's Southeastern Cooperative Wildlife Disease Study for help in figuring out what killed thousands of blackbirds.
Thousands of red-winged blackbirds, starlings and other night-roosting birds died suddenly on New Year's Eve in Beebe, Ark., followed late Sunday or early Monday by another apparently unrelated mass die-off hundreds of miles away near Labarre, La.
Wildlife officials in both states were sending carcasses to researchers at the National Wildlife Health Center in Madison, Wis., and the University of Georgia. No one is yet connecting the two mass deaths, but the Audubon Society is closely monitoring the situation.
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The Arkansas Game and Fish Commission spokesman Keith Stephens says the birds fell in an area about a mile long and a half-mile wide. Commission ornithologist Karen Rowe says the flock could have been hit by lightning or high-altitude hail, or may have been startled by fireworks.
It's not the first time birds have dropped from the Arkansas sky. Lightning killed ducks at Hot Springs in 2001 and hail knocked birds from the sky at Stuttgart in 1973 on the day before hunting season.
The Wall Street Journal is reporting the birds likely died as a result of booming noise, perhaps fireworks, in central Arkansas Friday. The noise may have incited a bird frenzy causing them to fly into houses and trees. The WSJ story states storms weren't in the area when the birds died. On the other hand, the radar shows storms departing the region between 9 and 10 p.m. central time. The birds reportedly started falling from the sky around 11 p.m.
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