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What killed all those birds in Arkansas?

Nearly 2,000 red-winged blackbirds inexplicably fell from the sky on New Year’s Eve.


Stephen B. Thornton / AP


BEEBE, ARK.—New Year’s revellers in a small Arkansas town were enjoying midnight fireworks when they noticed something other than sparks falling from the sky: thousands of dead blackbirds tumbling out of the darkness to the ground.

The red-winged blackbirds rained onto rooftops and sidewalks and into fields. One struck a woman walking her dog. Another hit a police cruiser.

In Beebe, a community of 5,000 northeast of Little Rock, birds were “littering the streets, the yards, the driveways, everywhere,” said Robby King, a county wildlife officer. “It was hard to drive down the street in some places without running over them.”

In all, more than 3,000 birds inexplicably dropped dead. Now scientists are investigating whether bad storms, fireworks or poison might have brought the flock down, or if a disoriented bird simply led the group into the ground.

A few stunned birds survived the fall and stumbled around like drunken revellers. There was little light across the countryside, save for the glimmer of fireworks and some lightning on the horizon.

Late Monday, researchers said fireworks probably startled the birds. Necropsies showed the birds suffered internal injuries that formed blood clots that helped kill them.

The tests showed lightning was probably not to blame. Poisoning was ruled out early on.

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

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

No one knows for sure why the flock died.

“We have a lot more questions,” said Karen Rowe, an ornithologist with the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission. She said there are documented cases of birds becoming confused and plunging to earth.


“Bad weather can occasionally catch flocks off guard, blow them off a roost, and they get hurled up suddenly into this thundercloud,” lab Director John Fitzpatrick said.


If weather was the cause, the birds could have died in several ways, Fitzpatrick said. They could easily become disoriented — with no lights to tell them up and down — and smashed into the ground. Or they could have died from exposure.

The birds’ feathers keep them at a toasty 40 C, but “once that coat gets unnaturally wet, it’s only a matter of minutes before they’re done for,” Fitzpatrick said.

Regardless of how they died, the birds will not be missed. Large blackbird roosts like the one at Beebe can have thousands of birds that leave ankle- to knee-deep piles of droppings in places.


Red-winged blackbirds are the among North America’s most abundant birds, with somewhere between 100 million and 200 million nationwide, Fitzpatrick said. Rowe put the number of dead in Beebe at “easily 3,000.”



Earlier Friday, a tornado killed three people in Cincinnati, Arkansas, about 250 kilometres away. Then, a couple hours before the birds died, thunderstorms also passed through parts of central Arkansas.



Last week, several thousand dead drum fish washed up along a 30-kilometre stretch of the Arkansas River, about 160 kilometres west of Beebe. Wildlife officials say the fish deaths are not related to the dead birds, and that because only one species of fish was affected, it is likely they were stricken by an illness.




“Every dog and cat in the neighbourhood that night was able to get a fresh snack that night,” Rowe said.

With files from Star Staff

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