Conspiracies Don't Kill Birds. People, However, Do.

Conspiracies Don't Kill Birds. People, However, Do.

www.nytimes.com

At the beginning of this month when about 5,000 red-winged blackbirds fell from the sky in one night in Arkansas, biologists were called on to put a damper on public speculation about pesticides and secret military tests by reminding everyone how many birds there are and how many die. They often do so as a result of human activity, but in far more mundane and dispiriting ways than conspiracy buffs might imagine.

(visit the link for the full news article)


Related News Links:
www.treehugger.com

While mass bird deaths in the hundreds or even thousands may be startling to people, this NY Times article really puts those numbers into perspective.

“Five billion birds die in the U.S. every year,” said Melanie Driscoll, a biologist and director of bird conservation for the Gulf of Mexico and Mississippi Flyway for the National Audubon Society.

That means that on average, 13.7 million birds die in this country every day.

Pretty staggering to think about the human impact on all this. It's sad - these numbers are SO huge, it's almost like they become meaningless. Oh 50 million here, 100 something million there...

Pesticides kill 72 million birds directly, but an unknown and probably larger number ingest the poisons and die later unseen. Orphaned chicks also go uncounted.

And then there is flying into objects, which is most likely what killed the birds in Arkansas. The government estimates that strikes against building windows alone account for anywhere from 97 million to nearly 976 million bird deaths a year. Cars kill another 60 million or so. High-tension transmission and power distribution lines are also deadly obstacles. Extrapolating from European studies, the Fish and Wildlife Service estimates 174 million birds die each year by flying into these wires. None of these numbers take into account the largest killer of birds in America: loss of habitat to development.

Anyway, not trying to poo-poo on all the bird conspiracy theory hodge podge ATS - just something to think about.

Of course, poisons and electric wires are not as exciting to think about as secret government plots, but Ms. Driscoll says it is time we pay attention to them anyway.

Some mass flocks of birds doin their thing:





www.nytimes.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

Watch out, i posted pretty much the same thing, And got ridiculed for it because people didnt understand the complete logic of it all

www.abovetopsecret.com...

Humans suck.

It's pretty much Karma when a bird gets sucked into a jet propeller and kills us back.

Now I'm miserable. I shall have to watch some David Attenborough documentaries to make me happier about humankind...

reply to post by mc_squared


Great vids - Mother nature is truly an artist! I loved the patterns and swirls that they make. Don't want to speak of the negative side right now as I found the vids too delightful.

It's unfortunate that so many birds die on a daily basis. Not only birds, but the countless types of other animals. This is just my 2 cents, but the mass media breakout seems to be a blindfold, while something else more significant goes on behind our backs..

Just thought I'd add a starling dancing show from my neck of the woods



Oh, for those that don't know.. we tend to have a bit of a fetish for fireworks down here and have yet to hear of any large die offs..



www.burningtheclocks.co.uk...

if you look at just the numbers, it seems a bit easier to accept the dirth of bird deaths.

however, I don't recall seeing news stories about hundreds of dead birds in multiple cities around the world, in the same week.

and I don't recall seeing, in that same time frame, reports of thousands of dead fish in various locales around the world.

and, in that same time frame, dead cows, octopi, bison etc.


if it were just birds, maybe it would be easily swept under the proverbial rug but, when taken together, with all the other mass deaths, it seems more than a bit odd.


a link with a timeline of the various deaths
www.abovetopsecret.com...

reply to post by Crakeur


I thought the cows died of some sort of bovine flu, The fish was also an odd one but someone suggested possibly over-fishing and the law that states if a fishing boat over-fishes the excess must be put back into the sea even if its allready dead, Also coming with increased reports that this excess fish is been released into the sea on the way back to harbour.

But as you say sir it is very odd indeed that seemingly everything seems connected in the time-frame of everything

reply to post by Crakeur


Living in the middle of a national park with a population that has a fetish for fireworks I think I would have certainly heard of fireworks causing bird deaths before now, even as a lame excuse since the gov has spent a long time (since the 1830s) trying to stamp out our devilish nature

The issue I have is with the lame excuses, which I find more worrisome as it implies they are not at all interested in masking what is happening.. Crabs die in Kent due to hypothermia, yet they die in waters are within seasonal average, and the waters themselves are in the warmer part of that species habitat. where is the effort in masking these deaths?

IMHO it is the lame excuses that are exacerbating the issue....

I can vouch for this post - I take my two turkeys every year with my hunting license...

I also have hunted a few quail and pheasant in my day - dove not really my thing not much to eat there for the effort.

Great info, but the recent events are a little different.

#1. If it happened all the time, it wouldn't be news, yet it is news, so it must be a little different than usual?
#2. These birds died from "trauma due to impact." No pesticide in the world produced impact trauma, unless maybe the bags of pesticide were dropped on the birds?
#3. The very fact that "biologists were called on to put a damper on public speculation" is a problem for me.

I can agree that not every headline is related to the original story, and perhaps there is some hyper sensitivity to the issue of animal deaths due to recent headlines, but the original Arkansas and Tennessee stories are still significant in their own right, and 5000 birds do not run into something and die from impact trauma on a regular basis, so that story is still unique and troubling!

I think what's likely happening is a combination of timing and the media suddenly latching onto and reporting every related story.

There's been wacky weather all over the world pretty much for the last 2 months, which would certainly explain at least some of the die-offs. For example the fish in Chesapeake Bay:

Maryland's 2 million dead fish caused by cold water

This type of thing does happen a lot more often than most people realize, but usually it doesn't make the news. Even still here's some reports from the last few years that I just googled up on the fly:

Thousands of Birds Drop Dead Over Australia, Cause Unknown

Natural Causes Blamed for Fish Kill in Lower Potomac

Alarm over high number of sea-bird deaths

Officials: Air quality OK after dozens of dead birds found in Austin

45 Birds Found Dead in Staten Island; City Claims No Health Risk

Cold blamed for Bolivia's mass fish deaths

(etc)

Meanwhile the dead crabs on the Kent coast story has been happening for three years in a row now. This article is from last winter:

Thousands of dead crabs wash up on Kent beaches

So I dunno, I'm still on the fence about the whole thing really. It's not that unusual. Yet this many in the span of a few weeks does seem a bit much. But maybe it's just the media coverage that's increased. I keep going back and forth. The global randomness of it all makes it seem like a mostly natural thing to me in any case, i.e. likely related to climate/weather.

I'm also just kind of cynical due to my experience with anything that becomes sensationalized from a conspiracy perspective in general. It's always ZOMG the sky is falling! for a few weeks, and then likely just fades away into obscurity like most of these things do. That's why I'm taking a wait and see approach more than anything.

But if/when that happens - I think the related treehugger article in the OP makes a great point about all the hoopla, why this has gotten our attention so much, and why we shouldn't forget about the underlying message - even when the headlines fade away:

Ultimately, the public's fascination with the die-offs is rooted in the concern that all may not be right between man and nature -- and that perhaps finally the scales have been tipped irrevocably, meaning we may be next. But as the stories fade from the headlines, perhaps we'll be too enraptured in the next news cycle to even breathe a sigh of relief that the problem has 'passed', so we'll carry on.

There is indeed something troubling about those mass deaths, but whether or not human activities are responsible for a few thousand bird corpses here and there isn't really the point. 13.7 million wild birds died today in the United States and it's unmentioned because there's little doubt that we have something to do with most them.

reply to post by TedHodgson

I thought the cows died of some sort of bovine flu

That was the quick first analysis. Later releases said it was a virus that acted in 12 hours to kill the whole herd, yet it was no danger to humans or surrounding cattle populations. Does that sound right to you? A virus capable of spreading lethally to an entire herd in 12 hours, yet it isn't dangerous to neighboring farms?

reply to post by getreadyalready


Nope it doesnt sound right, However surely its unconnected to other "Related" Animal deaths, I still remember Mad cow disease, TPTB were pretty vague when it came to that as well

However the cows could have been a specific genetic breed That was susceptable to such a virus, I also remember hearing of some sort of virus that only Aberdeen-Angus cows were susceptable too

reply to post by TedHodgson


I agree. So far it is impossible to connect all the events, and some of them are surely natural events. Others might be coincidental and/or accidents.

The main problem is all the flimsy cover stories. There would be much less attention if the truth were told from the beginning, and then we could tell fact from fiction. Instead we are left to choke down stories of hail, cold wind, fireworks, and lethal viruses that become harmless within 12 hours. I have trouble playing stupid long enough to believe all of their stories.

Thanks for this article, but I have to agree with those who said that while living creatures die everyday, they don't die in such numbers at the same time as often as has been happening over the past 5-7 years with increasing frequency. .Whatever the cause or causes,whacky weather or something humans are doing...it's a warning. One we would be very foolish not to heed.

reply to post by getreadyalready


Personally, I reckon they moved the decimal place when they were making the salt-lick, put in too much of one or the other ingredient, perhaps by accident, perhaps trying to maximise production of beef, cows got too much of a good thing and keeled over.

I've heard of people mixing too much of some supplement (I'm thinking urea, but I'm sure that can't be right... although I guess it might be handy if you had low nitrogen soil and were trying to produce beef) into molasses and inadvertantly wiping out their herds.

reply to post by mc_squared


I'd go so far to say that conspiracies don't kill birds but conspiracies kill people......maybe the whole "throusands of birds suddenly die" thing was a test of some sort of agent to next be used on people......in this day and age, i wouldn't be surprised in teh least...