In early January, mass media reported about the mass death of birds. First, the news came from the United States, where supposedly dead blackbirds rained down on the ground. Then news of similar phenomena began to come from Europe. Experts-ornithologists answer why birds die
To the more frequent weather cataclysms, a new attack was added - massive rains from: birds. They took place in the USA, Canada, Sweden, Italy, Turkey, Romania and have already caused a real panic among the population. Many see in this natural phenomenon a harbinger of the imminent Apocalypse, which we are constantly foreshadowed by various predictors.
It all began, perhaps, in the American state of Arkansas. In the vicinity of the small town of Biib, thousands of birds fell from the sky on New Year's Eve, which were initially mistaken for thrush. However, later it turned out that these were red-winged tourpials (Agelaius phoeniceus), otherwise called American orioles. On the first morning of the New Year, people went outside to find that the ground was littered with lifeless bird carcasses.
Bird watchers have found that the birds died as a result of their collision with various solid objects - presumably poles, trees and houses. But what made the birds fly into the barriers? Scientists believe they were terrified of something, perhaps a New Year's fireworks. And although in everyday life, Americans do not really like these birds, since they devastate grain fields, but the tragedy that happened shocked all residents of the state.
The next day, history repeated itself. Residents of the small town of Falkoping in southern Sweden found about a hundred jackdaws on the ground. Some were already dead, others were barely breathing. The cause of death is the same as in the case of the Arkansas tourpials - colliding with obstacles. However, no fireworks were fired that night.
Meanwhile, the "American tragedy" was gaining momentum. In early January, hundreds of dead birds littered the streets of Point Coupe, Louisiana. On Friday, January 7, in the city of Faenza, in the northern Italian province of Ravenna, more than 400 turtledoves and white doves were killed. The birds' beaks were covered with some kind of blue substance.
Naturally, a version arose that the birds were poisoned by chemicals. But later it turned out that the cause of death was the usual indigestion - the birds ate the waste left over from the processing of sunflower seeds. Although at the same time the death of birds was recorded exclusively in the area of the route leading to the nearest chemical plant.
Another case of mass death of birds happened in the Canadian province of Quebec, in the vicinity of the town of Saint-Augustin-de-Demore. By the way, a month earlier, 25 dead pigeons were found there on one of the land plots. Studies of tissue samples from dead birds have not yet yielded results.
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On January 10, dead starlings were found falling from the sky in Turkey. A day later, a mass death of starlings was recorded in the neighborhood, on the territory of Romania, just 260 km from Bucharest. Initially, it was assumed that the birds died from "bird flu", but laboratory studies have established that the starlings died from alcohol poisoning: they ate grape pomace left over from wine production.
Thus, the Romanian incident was the only one in which it was possible to establish the exact cause of the death of the birds. But as for the rest, scientists still cannot say anything concrete.
The most common version put forward by scientists is poisoning with unknown toxins. Moreover, in Arkansas, a massive death of fish was also recorded. Hundreds of thousands of fish were found dead in the river flowing through the same town of Beeb, where the incident with the dead tourpials happened. A huge amount of dead fish also washed ashore in the Chesapeake Bay. Information about the mass death of fish and crabs came from Brazil, New Zealand, England. Is it really about a global environmental disaster ?!
Other versions are also being put forward - climate change, a change in the Earth's magnetic poles, the use of secret chemical weapons, a sign that heralds the end of the world.
Ufologist Vladislav Karabanov even associates the phenomenon with UFOs: they say, birds crash into unidentified flying objects during the flight and break.
However, according to scientists, there are no grounds for special panic and apocalyptic moods yet. They argue that the mass death of birds is not such a rare phenomenon, just before, when there was no Internet, information did not spread so quickly.
The Geological Survey of America registered nearly a hundred mass deaths in the United States in 2010. And the first such episode was recorded in Louisiana in 1896. In 1924, it rained birds in San Diego. True, some of them survived and then scattered.
In December 2007, the streets of the American town of Austin, Texas, were literally littered with the corpses of sparrows and pigeons. Almost simultaneously, the same thing happened in Australia, and the deaths of birds covered a large area. The Australian Department of Environment and Wildlife estimates that the number of corpses has reached several thousand. And in March 2010 another abnormal "rain" of birds, fish and frogs took place in Australia, but that time most of the animals survived.
Valentina Serdyukova, head of the epidemiological department of the Sochi branch of the FGUZ Center for Hygiene and Epidemiology in the Krasnodar Territory, does not exclude that the cause of the mass death of birds may be bird flu or another infection. Therefore, you should not touch the bird corpses without appropriate protective equipment, she warns.
Nadezhda Yegorova, Candidate of Biological Sciences, President of the Birds and People club, told Utru Rossii about why birds die.
“Russian ornithologists have not yet put their hand to this and have not figured it out, and we have not yet received clear explanations from our foreign colleagues,” says Yegorova. "I am inclined to believe that this is some kind of mass poisoning - food poisoning."
The expert categorically rejected the version of the use of some kind of chemical weapon. “Chemical weapons would work not only on birds, but on all living things. And here the action is selective - on certain species and certain individuals, - the expert notes. - What do we see? These are Canada, Turkey, America. And basically these are species that feed on either a variety of foods - omnivores. Like our pigeons. Or they are fruit-eating birds - like our thrushes."
“We also cannot give a clear answer about the possibility of any disease such as bird flu,” added Nadezhda Yegorova. - Because we have not seen such a massive and unexpected death for a long time. An epizootic is possible. It may not be bird flu, but something else."
According to the scientist, this is not the first time we see such a massive death of birds. This was recorded in the 50-60s. Then all over the world pesticides were very actively used. It was chemical poisoning.
Nadezhda Yegorova tried to dispel the apocalyptic mood: there are people who see the death of birds as a formidable portent of the end of the world. “Any situation can be explained from the point of view of biology normally, in scientific language,” the expert emphasizes. - Only now we need to do tests for this - normal, good, high-quality tests. It is clear that due to the fact that we had an abnormal heat and now abnormal icing, thaws, of course, the first thing that many people want to believe in is the approach of the end of the world. There is no need to be afraid, there is no mysticism in this. There is no need to be afraid of any of this."
A truly massive bird plague was only in Arkansas, Vladimir Galushin, professor of the Department of Biogeography at Moscow State University, told the Voice of Russia:
“All other cases - in Canada, Sweden, Romania, Japan - are different. There we are talking about dozens of birds. The death of dozens of birds in winter is a completely common phenomenon, not noticed by anyone. If it had not been for the Arkansas incident, the media would not have shown much interest in the deaths of dozens of birds. And the case in the United States triggered the media mechanism that got excited."
The scientist suggested that the birds could be adversely affected by changes in the magnetic field due to magnetic storms or some kind of technical testing. Unlike mammals, they are very sensitive to such changes. We cannot exclude a snowy winter, which is unusual for Europe and the USA: birds flying to these regions for wintering could not adapt to severe weather conditions. Apart from climate change, humans also involuntarily become the enemy of birds, says Kazimir Bolshakov, head of the RAS Ornithological Station on the Curonian Spit:
“We are creating huge illuminated zones around cities. Birds fly at night, when they get into a lit area in high humidity conditions, they lose contact with the environment and lose orientation. Mortality in this case near cities is catastrophically high. It's just that no one has ever counted her."
As for the climate, last year's heat wave in Russia led to an increase in the death of birds - they not only suffered from dehydration, but also from the smoke of fires. And icing of tree branches due to sudden rains in December is today a serious threat to the life of birds: many of them may not survive until spring. The climate lays down such problems of bird survival, which will come back to haunt with much larger numbers than we are now discussing, says a researcher at the Zoological Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Professor Leonid Sokolov:
“A number of species cannot forage. For example, a pika, the worst thing for it is icing. Because she is looking for insects under the bark. That is, it should actually die out this winter. And the great tit cannot forage under a large layer of snow. Now a thick layer of snow will practically knock out this population."
The current bird disturbance makes one think about the problems of climate and anthropogenic impact on nature. This is a problem not only for zoologists; environmental protection is a universal human task, experts are convinced.
Consulting company Curry & Kerlinger, LLC has compiled a list of leading causes of bird deaths by collecting and analyzing data published by scientists, environmental organizations and government agencies. The data refer to the United States, but the company assures that it is quite possible to extrapolate them to all developed countries of the world, Kommersant notes.
1. Glass windows kill up to 900 million birds annually. According to research by Dr. Daniel Clem, who has studied the problem of bird collision with windows, more birds die for this reason than for any other related to human activity.
2. Domestic cats kill up to 100 million birds annually. These are the data of experts from the National Audubon Society - an organization that studies and protects birds in the United States. According to experts from the University of Wisconsin, in this state alone, domestic cats kill about 7 million birds a year.
3. Cars. According to scientists and the US Fish and Wildlife Service, collisions with cars kill between 50 million and 100 million birds every year.
4. Power lines. Collisions with power lines kill up to 170 million birds a year in the United States.
5. Agricultural work. According to the Smithsonian Institution, approximately 67 million birds die from pesticide poisoning each year.
6. Hunting. More than 100 million birds are annually destroyed by licensed hunters legally.
All of the above versions were almost immediately refuted by scientists. As for the versions about the involvement of the military or chemists, or both, they do not stand up to criticism for one simple reason: if the HAARP (High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program) program was involved in the death of birds, then the damage would hardly be so limited.
According to Kommersant, the mass death of birds and animals remains one of the most poorly studied phenomena. For example, no one has yet found the reason why dozens and hundreds of whales are thrown ashore. No one can explain with absolute accuracy the mass death of birds and fish (not in these cases, so in others). “The behavior of animals, birds and fish leading to self-destruction is a rather rare phenomenon, but from that even more mysterious. And to find for him any one explanation - ecological, geophysical or any other - is not yet possible, - says one of the researchers of the UN Environmental Program Nick Nuttall. - Science is still trying to explain these cases."