Just like out of some gruesome horror movie, thousands of songbirds began to literally fall out of the sky across a number of U.S. western states in the month of September. The event left wildlife researchers incredibly shell-shocked and extremely curious over what could have caused these birds to drop to their deaths.
It was soon discovered that it wasn’t just one type of bird either, but various species of birds found either dead or injured on roadsides, hiking paths, and backyards in a number of states including Colorado, Arizona, Texas, Nebraska and New Mexico. And the birds differed in breeds from hummingbirds to swallows, warblers to woodpeckers, and flycatchers to loons. A number of them were said to be migratory birds that ate insects and even others birds, usually traveling ‘from the northern tundra in Alaska and Canada to winter in Central and South America.’
Shockingly, after biologists sent the results to the U.S. Geological Survey federal laboratories, they found that a mind-boggling 80 percent of the specimens were actually severely starved. In fact, the Audobon Society reported that their carcasses showed such tell-tale symptoms as empty stomachs, dehydration, emaciated wings, and depleted fat stores.
But the question still remained, why did these birds starve to death in the first place? Apparently, researchers would soon find out that the reason was due to the massively frigid and erratic weather conditions linked to climate change sadly caused by none other than human beings.
Director of USGS National Wildlife Health Center in Madison, Wisconsin, Jonathan Sleeman, said, “It looks like the immediate cause of death in these birds was emaciation as a result of starvation. It’s really hard to attribute direct causation, but given the close correlation of the weather events with the death of these birds, we think that either the weather event forced these birds to migrate prior to being ready, or maybe impacted their access to food sources during their migration.”
The experts shared that they believed that the climate crisis was truly the cause of the birds dying in mass numbers. They argued that their deaths were probably caused by the droughts, cold fronts, and possibly even smoke from the massive wildfires raging throughout a large portion of the western states were all major components as to why the birds died.
Although a number of lab results managed to negate that smoke wasn’t a major factor in most of the deaths in the birds, a huge number of the migratory birds were possibly led off track by the massive fires, forcing them into some of the more frigid and icy cold snowstorms battering the southwest during the dates of September 9 or 10. This then caused many to freeze to their deaths, become disoriented, collide into both buildings and cars, and eventually die from impact, or perhaps, were even eaten by predators at times.
Many of the birds were sadly affected earlier by the mega-drought that the U.S. southwest experienced, which left them in an even more vulnerable state before they were struck by the latter weather conditions.
According to Professor Martha Desmond of New Mexico State University’s Department of Fish, Wildlife and Conservation Ecology, “We’re not talking about short-term starvation – this is a longer-term starvation. They became so emaciated they actually had to turn to wasting their major flight muscles. This means that this isn’t something that happened overnight.”
“Here in New Mexico we’ve seen a very dry year, and we’re forecast to have more of those dry years,” she added. “And in turn I would say it appears that a change in climate is playing a role in this, and that we can expect to see more of this in the future. I think it’s just very sad… Especially the thought that we are seeing some long-term starvation in some of these birds.”
Ms. Desmond actually worked with specialists from the Bureau of Land Management and White Sands Missile Range to gather some of the bird carcasses in order to determine the magnitude of lost bird life, which she described as ‘a national tragedy.’ Moreover, experts that were also tasked to work with the droves of dead birds were appallingly disturbed by the high number of deaths.
One such grad student from NMSU, Allison Salas, shared, “The fact that we’re finding hundreds of these birds dying, just kind of falling out of the sky is extremely alarming.”
Another worrisome fact is that since 1970, bird populations in North America has already plummeted by a massive 29 percent, which equates to a staggering three billion birds. Sadly, a 2019 study has shown that the continuous rise in temperatures caused by climate change have forced a number of bird species to excessively alter their migration patterns.
In the same state, due to pastures and grasslands being turned into large crops causing them to thin out, birds have lost a number of their nesting places. Meanwhile, pesticides have also killed off a large number of insects, leaving birds without their natural food sources, causing them to starve.
Desmond also explained, “A number of these species are already in trouble. They are already experiencing huge population declines and then to have a traumatic event like this is – it’s devastating.” And unless lawmakers make some drastic moves to lessen the already horrible climate change effects on the planet, then there’s a huge chance birds will continue to drop dead from the sky.
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