New year fireworks may have caused Arkansas bird deaths

One of the thousands of red-winged blackbirds that rained down on Beebe, Arkansas, on New Year's Eve. Photograph: Stephen B Thornton/AP

New year fireworks appear to be behind thousands of blackbirds mysteriously falling from the sky onto a small Arkansas town, scientists said yesterday.

Revellers in Beebe were enjoying midnight fireworks on New Year's Eve when they noticed dead birds raining down.

The red-winged blackbirds fell on rooftops, pavements and fields. One struck a woman walking her dog, while another hit a police car.

Birds were "littering the streets, the gardens, the driveways, everywhere," said Robby King, a county wildlife officer in Beebe, a community of 5,000 people north-east of the state capital, Little Rock. "It was hard to drive down the street in some places without running over them."

More than 3,000 birds fell to the ground. Scientists said fireworks appeared to have frightened the birds to such a degree that they crashed into homes, cars and each other. Some may have flown straight into the ground.
"The blackbirds were flying at rooftop level instead of treetop level" to avoid explosions above, said Karen Rowe, an ornithologist with the Arkansas Game and Fish commission. "Blackbirds have poor eyesight, and they started colliding with things."
Rowe stopped short of declaring the mystery solved, however, saying that laboratories planned to test bird carcasses for toxins or disease.
Other theories were that violent thunderstorms might have disoriented the flock, or that one bird could have led them all into a fatal plunge to the ground.
A few stunned birds survived the fall, and stumbled around like drunken revellers, according to witnesses. There was little light at the time, except for the fireworks and some lightning on the horizon. In the tumult, many birds probably lost their bearings.
"I turn and look across my yard, and there's all these lumps," said resident Shane Roberts, adding that he thought hail was falling until he saw a dazed blackbird under his truck.
His 16-year-old daughter, Alex, spent Saturday morning picking the blackbirds up. "Their legs are really squishy," she said.