More birds fall from sky — this time in Louisiana

These are some of the hundreds of blackbirds that fell on a rural stretch of highway in Louisiana on Monday.

story and photo by NBC

Some 500 dead and dying birds fell onto a Louisiana highway on Monday, just three days after a similar incident in Arkansas.

The events have led to speculation running from poisonings to "End of Days" scenarios, but a key federal agency emphasized that mass bird die-offs are not that rare.

Most of the birds found on Louisiana Highway 1 near Point Coupee were red-winged blackbirds, as was the case in Beebe, Ark., some 360 miles away. The species is one of the most common in the United States, with a population estimated at up to 200 million.

Some of the Louisiana birds will be tested by the National Wildlife Center run by the U.S. Geological Survey. But a USGS spokesman told The Baton Rouge Advocate that USGS records showed 16 incidents in the last 30 years where more than 1,000 blackbirds have died all at once.

"These large events do take place," he said. "It's not terribly unusual."

In Arkansas, preliminary tests showed the blackbirds there, as many as 5,000, died after massive trauma. Experts said the birds were likely spooked by fireworks, lightning or some other loud event and then ran into each other and other objects as they fled at night while roosting.

"The birds suffered from acute physical trauma leading to internal hemorrhage and death," the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission said in a statement Monday. "There was no sign of chronic or infectious disease."
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