Blackbird Mystery Deepens: More Birds Fall From Sky in Louisiana
Tuesday 04 January 2011 Motorists stopped and gawked at hundreds
of dead red-winged blackbirds on a highway in Pointe Coupee
Parish, La., Monday, just days after residents of Beebe, Ark.,
saw more than 1,000 birds fall from the sky on New Year's Eve.
On Monday, state biologists were gathering up some of the
approximately 500 blackbirds and starlings that lay dead along
Louisiana Route 1 near Pointe Coupee Central High School for
testing. The United States Geological Survey has noted 16
incidents in the past 30 years where more than 1,000 black birds
have died at the same time, usually the result of tightly-packed
flocks flying into bad weather. What's more, more than 5 billion
birds die of natural causes in the United States each year, so
it is, in a way, unusual that Americans don't witness more major
bird kills. Yet the use of improved testing and a state of
heightened concern on the parts of state ornithologists is a
proper response, even if