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Arkansas: Thousands of Blackbirds Perish

by Kathy Jones on Jan 3 2012 7:35 PM

 Arkansas: Thousands of Blackbirds Perish
It is being reported that around 5,000 blackbirds dropped dead in Arkansas town on New Year's Eve.
It is the second time in two years that the birds have fallen as the calendar year changes.

Given the amount of birds and the condensed time and location of their deaths, there has to be some commonality behind the bizarre event, but scientists remain baffled, the Daily Mail reported.

"I thought the Mayor was messing with me when he called me," Milton McCullar, the street department supervisor in Beebe, Arkansas told ABC News.

"He got me up at 4:00 in the morning and told me we had birds falling out of he sky."

The fact that the birds were even flying in the middle of the night does not make any sense as that is not something that they are trained to do.

"Most of these birds don't see any better at night than you or I do. They aren't adapted to see at night like owls so if they went off from their perches at night they're blind at night just like you would be," said Dr Kevin McGowan, an ornithologist from Cornell University.

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Celebratory fireworks were blamed for last year's deaths, with people thinking that the birds were startled to death.

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.

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Source-ANI


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