Wednesday, January 5, 2011

More Bird Deaths--Now Sweden!

STOCKHOLM (AFP) – In a week that saw unexplained massive bird deaths in the southern United States, up to 100 birds were found lying in a snow-covered street in Sweden Wednesday, officials said.


"Most were dead," Christer Olofsson of rescue services in the southwestern town of Falkoeping said of the 50 to 100 jackdaw birds, a type of crow.

Ornithologist Anders Wirdheim said the find was surprising.

"This is unusual," he told tabloid Aftonbladet, which posted online a reader's photo of dozens of black birds littering a snow-covered road.

"They are probably jackdaws. They spend the winter in large flocks. If they are exposed to disturbances, they can become so stressed that they fly themselves to death," he said.

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Doubtlessly this sort of thing happens a lot, but all the sudden news coverage of it makes it seem like THE END OF THE WORLD APPROACHETH!!!!!

1 comment:

Sharon Day said...

I'll wait for the description of the end of the world in "Ghostbusters." When cats and dogs are living together, we will know we are in trouble! Humor aside, that's pretty freaky. What's more freaky is the explanation they flew themselves to death. If we saw a crowd of dead people along the roadside, would we ever in a million years assume they ran their asses to death in a marathon? Seems the most likely thing is a leader bird in a fog ran them to ground or perhaps they ran into a cloud of something toxic.