Fireworks 'sent birds into deadly frenzy'

One struck a woman walking her dog and another hit a police vehicle.

Birds were “littering the streets, the yards, the driveways, everywhere”, said Robby King, a county wildlife officer in Beebe, a community of 5,000 north east of Little Rock.

“It was hard to drive down the street in some places without running over them.”

For some people, the scene evoked images of the apocalypse and cut short New Year celebrations. Many families phoned police instead of popping champagne.

“I think the switchboard lit up pretty good,” said Beebe police captain Eddie Cullum. “For all the doomsdayers, that was definitely the end of the world.”

In all, more than 3,000 birds tumbled to the ground. Scientists said last night that the fireworks appeared to have frightened the birds into such a frenzy that they crashed into homes, cars and each other. Some may have flown straight into the ground.

“The blackbirds were flying at rooftop level instead of treetop level” to avoid explosions above, said Karen Rowe, an ornithologist with the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission.

“Blackbirds have poor eyesight and they started colliding with things.”

But Ms Rowe stopped short of declaring the mystery solved, saying labs planned to test bird carcasses for toxins or disease.

Another theory was that violent thunderstorms might have disoriented the flock or even just one bird that could have led the group in a fatal plunge to the ground.

A few stunned birds survived their fall and stumbled around like drunken revellers. There was little light across the countryside at the time, save for the glimmer of fireworks and some lightning on the horizon. In the tumult, many birds probably lost their bearings.

“I turn and look across my yard, and there’s all these lumps,” said Shane Roberts, who thought hail was falling until he saw a dazed blackbird beneath his truck.

Paul Duke filled three five-gallon buckets with dead birds on New Year’s Day. “They were on the roof of the house, in the yard, on the sidewalks, in the street,” said the school supervisor.

Red-winged blackbirds are among North America’s most abundant birds, with somewhere between 100 million and 200 million nationwide, according to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology in Ithaca, New York. Ms Rowe put the number of dead in Beebe at “easily 3,000”. Thousands can roost in one tree.

The Game and Fish Commission shipped carcasses to the Arkansas Livestock and Poultry Commission and the National Wildlife Health Centre in Madison, Wisconsin. Researchers at the University of Georgia’s wildlife disease study group also asked for a set of birds. Test results could be back in a week.

A few grackles and a couple of starlings were also among the dead. Those species roost with blackbirds, particularly in winter.

“They died from massive trauma,” said Game and Fish Commission spokesman Keith Stephens.

Residents heard loud fireworks just before the birds started hitting the ground.

“They started going crazy, flying into one another,” Mr Stephens said. The birds apparently also hit homes, trees and other objects, and some could have been killed by flying hard into the ground.

The area where the birds fell is too large to determine if any specific blast rousted the birds, Police chief Wayne Ballew said.

“It was New Year’s Eve night. Everybody and their brother was shooting fireworks,” he said. The city allows fireworks only on New Year’s Eve and Independence Day.

Bad weather was to blame for earlier bird kills in Arkansas.

In 2001, lightning killed dozens of mallards at Hot Springs and a flock of dead pelicans was found in the woods about 10 years ago, Ms Rowe said. Lab tests showed that they too had been hit by lightning.

In 1973 hail knocked birds from the sky at Stuttgart, Arkansas, on the day before hunting season.

Some of the birds were caught in a violent storm’s updrafts and became encased in ice before falling from the sky. Some were described as bowling balls with feathers.