Sentinel Warning: What may the birds be telling us?

Originally posted by masterp
The magnetic field of Earth is changing.

Oh my god is this true? then were all dead. Is this true everyone?

Lately I've been noticing something really strange about the birds in my area, actually, statewide. Birds have been literally playing chicken, flying low right in the front of my vehicle. This hasn't just happened once or twice, but on numerous occasions, so much that I can't even count the number of times on both my hands.
It's not just one variety of bird either, it's all types, I've seen crows flying low in front of my vehicle, blue jays, black birds, blue birds, cardinals, etc. I've come close to hitting them many times. Now, something tells me this is not normal behavior for birds, because I have not ever seen so many birds flying in the path right in front of my vehicle. My boyfriend has noticed this as well when he's driving, along with some other friends of mine who mentioned the same occurance of birds flying right in front of their cars, almost like kamikaze suicide birds.

We all know the environment is in the midst of a dramatic change, with global warming and all that...so, is this behavior the birds are displaying a definite sign that something is really wrong? You betcha.

A nice find by V Kaminski

Global Warming and Pelicans...


BTW, jeepin4x4girl, when I read your post several days ago, I thought nothing of it. Lately, however, I have occasion to think of your post far more than I would like to admit. Hope it's in our heads.

I've had robins abandon their nest in my cedar tree. They were working on it about 3 weeks ago, and it looks to be complete but they just left it and haven't returned. It's about 12 feet up. Aslo, we usually have a lot of scrub jays....have only seen one in the last month, but lots of song birds and robin this year.

I have a flock of chickens, none of them are acting unusual....so far.....

Robins...especially inexperienced pairs...are known to do that.

"An Inconvenient Truth" presents Al Gore's report (in both movie and book form) on problems and solutions presented by global climate change. On pages 152 and 153, for example, historic graphs of peak bird hatching and peak caterpillar season show simultaneous peaks; starting in 2000, however, scientists in The Netherlands found that due to global warming, peak caterpillar season occurred 2 weeks before the peak bird hatching season, "leaving the mother birds without their traditional source of food for the chicks."

An Inconvenient Truth, by Al Gore. 2006 Rodale Press, paperback $21.95

Check at your local public and/or college library, which will certainly be adding this book to their collections.

Since I am in library school currently and thus have to buy a lot of textbooks and other books, I got a membership at the Barnes and Noble bookstore chain, saving 10% on in-store purchases. For books I have to order, I have them delivered to the store where I pick them up so I don't have to pay shipping fees. Also, Ralph Nader has endorsed Barnes & Noble as one of the more responsible bookselling groups.

The unusual local bird activity around my house (in a mountain area in Southern California) includes numerous birds this spring pecking on our windows every morning, starting at dawn and lasting at least an hour. This never happened before. Of course, we removed our balcony bird feeder last winter after the reports on bird flu started to focus on bird migration routes.

[edit on 10-6-2006 by FutureLibrarian]

Originally posted by Comberman
But the good news is that even the smallest, unlikeliest of gardens or backyards will be adopted by birds if they can be attracted into it. Plant a tree or buy a bag of peanuts.

This is very true. My father has always done just that. Our back yard is a sort of "haven" you could say, and "the man in the window" calls to them and throws peanuts right to them- they're picky though! Only Planters, none of the bulk stuff.
They always come back(some live in the roof ), because there is always food for them, morning noon, and evening

Last year though I did notice that there were more single doves than usual, I don't know why so many wouldn't have/couldn't find a mate?

Birdbrains: Birds can struggle to weather the weather

The hot topic among Vermont birders is, of course, the weather. It's been a wet spring, and people are noticing its impact not just on their spirits, but on nesting birds.

Rain can flood nests, cause nests to fall apart, destroy eggs, and kill young. Rain also influences the abundance of food. When food is scarce, chicks don't develop as quickly and can even starve. When a whole nest fails, many birds will make another nest. If this re-nesting attempt is late in the season, the young have less time to grow before fall migration, which makes it harder to survive.

Many people are reporting nest failures this year, but is it really affecting bird populations? Scott Sillett of the Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center is one of the researchers studying the impacts of global weather patterns on songbird populations. His long-term study of black-throated blue warblers investigates differences between El Nino and La Nina years. Many of us are familiar with the El Nino event of 1997 when California was drenched in rain. In Jamaica, where black-throated blue warblers winter, El Nino years bring less rain, and the warblers have a harder time surviving the winter because food is scarce. Similarly, on their breeding grounds in New Hampshire, Scott found that during El Nino years there is less food available and, consequently, fledglings weigh less.

More...

Tired, hungry birds turn up on beaches around Santa Cruz

SANTA CRUZ, Calif. An unusual number of a species of baby pelican that's under federal protection are showing up weak and hungry on beaches in the Santa Cruz area.

Animal rescue workers say at least 29 sick birds have been found this month. The S-P-C-A had to euthanize four birds this week that were very sick and that another died on its own.

Necropsies found that some birds had empty stomachs.

More...

And...

Scientists Baffled By Sick Santa Cruz Pelicans


[edit on 17-6-2006 by loam]

Cape Cod weekly wildlife sightings

...This has been another interesting week for bird sightings. The birds reported consist of mostly sea/shore birds. Many of the birds reported are uncommon birds in Massachusetts, which continues the trend of low numbers of common birds and good numbers of rare and uncommon birds...

More...

this one is wierd, amazing and scary sight I would venture to say

Vultures lay siege to Amazon jungle city
LIMA, Peru (Reuters) - Hundreds of vultures have swarmed the airport of the biggest city in Peru's Amazon jungle, putting planes at risk and threatening to cut off the city of more than 400,000 people from the rest of the country.

The birds already have forced the airport in Iquitos -- a popular tourist destination that can only be reached from the capital Lima by air -- to shut down eight hours a day, said Aurelio Crovetto, head of Peru's state-run airport authority.

And here is another crazy one:

Bird deaths puzzle Unalaska

More than 1,600 sea bird carcasses have washed onto Unalaska shores over the last two days in a mysterious die-off that scientists are scrambling to understand.

Some say they may have died of hunger. Others say they're smashing into boats.

Maybe it's both, some scientists said.

Several hundred black, gull-like shearwaters died after flying into a crabbing boat that steamed through the early morning darkness in Unalaska Bay on Wednesday morning, said Forrest Bowers, a fisheries biologist for the state Department of Fish and Game in Unalaska.

More...

Hey guys, this past friday I saw this HUGE flock of canadian geese fly right over my head. There were at least 17. They usually don't leave until october or something. It is a bit weird to see them fly off, and it looked like they were in a hurry. There group was a little messy. They looked like this. The design does no justice. K = BIRD Weird, isn't it?

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Balmy winter puts chill on bird migration

Some European birds have failed to fly south for the winter, apparently lured to stay by weeks of mild weather that experts widely link to global warming.

Birds including robins, thrushes and ducks that would normally fly south from Scandinavia, for instance, have been seen in December -- long after snow usually drives them south. And Siberian swans have been late reaching western Europe.

"With increasing warmth in winter we suspect that some types of birds won't bother to migrate at all," said Grahame Madge, spokesman of the British Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB).

Many individual birds were leaving later, and flying less far.

More....

One more post for this thread.

Can't believe we missed the Mallard's mass die-off here.

Contradictions and Cover-up

You know, when the poison gas hit TX, I didn't bat an eye. WHen I heard about the dead birds everywhere I said "that's odd". With all of the crazy seizmic activity, and erupting volcanos, I figured something fishy was going on.

Now I know. Volcano, starring Tommy Lee Jones is on AMC. Now I'm scared. Do you think they're trying to tell us something? I mean look at the world! We've got birds dying everywhere, and Disney charecters punching children in the face! It's the end people.

The end is really flippin' nye!!!

Thanks for pulling this back up. rasobasi.

IMO - the end is not nigh. BUT - we are getting some very clear early warning signs.

Maybe we can act before it's too late?

Of course, it's more fun to bomb Somalia, and more profitable too. With the added benefit that everyone's distracted - and kept ignorant about real crises of real import.

I always joke around about the world coming to an end, because i did strongly believe it wouldn't happen in my lifetime... but this is just plain scary.

People can say all they want about it being a coincidence or natural phenomenon... but the truth is it isn't. All these events connecting at the same time would have some mathematically remote chance of happening.

I've spent a fair bit of time today in the Survivalist thread and am about to go and prepare myself if anything happens.

Excuse my ingnoorance but how do birs keep cool? Could the warmer than normal temps have any impact? I pretty sure they don't sweat. Add to this drought lowering food lowering imune, lowering tolerance to heat?

Originally posted by TheLightBringer
Excuse my ingnoorance but how do birs keep cool?

They pant...beak open.

Unless slowly acclimated, most birds do not tolerate the heat well at all.