Dead Birds Falling. . . .
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shawneeo 
Posts: 7951
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 Posted: 06:47PM Mar 1, 2012 |
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I tried to find some info about the dead bird phenomenon in VA when I was a kid. I came up blank. Does anyone have any suggestions for how to find info on something like that when it happened in the early 1970s, way before the internet?
Life... can be so many things... how can anyone ever think they are RIGHT? HAhahahahahahaha!!!!! |
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Melanmel16
Posts: 205
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Posted: 05:48PM Apr 9, 2012 |
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well, i know that thats happening to jellyfish @ the jersey shore. its slimy...
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eamon
Posts: 13
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Posted: 08:55AM Apr 15, 2012 |
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shawneeo wrote: I tried to find some info about the dead bird phenomenon in VA when I was a kid. I came up blank. Does anyone have any suggestions for how to find info on something like that when it happened in the early 1970s, way before the internet?
Per my previous post, this is not so much a dead bird phenomena as it is an interest in dead birds stories. Back in the 70s and before the internet, these stories stayed local or never even became written except for small town or village papers. Now, it's just easier to jump onto the global news stage with any story.
It's the kind of thing that people who live in cities were seldom aware of but it has always taken place from time to time right under their noses since forever. Remember, just because you might never have heard of something before does not mean it's new. The same applies to dead fish or squid or jellyfish in most cases - just natural causes.
There are hundreds of smaller insect species that die off en mass each season as part of their life cycle but, unless you're a biologist looking into them, you wouldn't notice it. It still happened and it didn't have any connection to any unusual outside cause. Butterflies, cicadas, nymphs, bees and moths all die in huge numbers and their remains blow away or get consumed without the CNN affiliate news crew capturing the moment on tape.
Many birds are supposed to migrate to stay alive, but, if there seems to be enough food around for a particular group, they will likely try to stay around then, when the weather changes suddenly, it's too late and they get caught too far north and that whole group has a mass die off. No alien space ships or military chemical weapons tests, just one of the humdrum causes that happens from time to time.
Man made causes like annual fireworks displays and the effect of night lighting in glass skyscrapers are definitely an issue in specific cases. Municipal laws will usually address those bird and wildlife issues in most jurisdictions these days. Many towers no longer light up at night anyway. I'm assuming that if a fireworks display started up with some smaller popping it would drive a flock away before the big explosions go off at the end. This method is like how airports drive flocks of birds away from runways.
One dead crow is road kill. Three dead crows in the same field gets noted by a farmer. Fifteen dead crows in the same town is a phenomena. The first is nothing. The second might be spoken of. The third only gets written about on a slow day in a backwater town, yet, it's all equivalent. The real story is how easy it now is for that story and a couple similar ones from the backwater towns to get picked up by a global news outlet and turned into a modern folklore legend.
Cue music from The Twilight Zone.
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shawneeo
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Posted: 08:19PM Apr 19, 2012 |
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Well, partly what you're saying is true, but I don't think it covers every case. I'm not sure what it has to do with my case.
I lived in a small town and one year we had a massive amount of dead birds all over the neighborhood, possibly the whole town. I said that I recently looked for info on it and couldn't find any and asked if anyone knows of any kind of data bases for things like that, like a University biology research type site that might have been tracking birds, etc., for many years.
The case that started this topic might have been a case of interest in dead birds instead of an unusual case of dead birds, or it might actually be an unusual case of dead birds that should be looked into.
I'm just saying, the dead crows might be of interest to the local farmer, or it might just be a natural phenom, but just because it's picked up and made into a big deal by news, doesn't mean that that's the only real story. The dead crows might still be a real story that has some impact on the people who live there... it's not made irrelevant because of how the story is used.
Life... can be so many things... how can anyone ever think they are RIGHT? HAhahahahahahaha!!!!! |
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eamon
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Posted: 10:55AM Apr 20, 2012 |
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Irrelevant is a bit strong I agree. Although I quoted your post, my thoughts are also meant to address the broader topic as well since this is the ongoing thread.
I can only suggest that since nobody with any serious credentials bothered to look deeply into it (which would have left a paper trail) means it was not considered worthy of investigation.
Up until a certain point in my life I had never personally witnessed the "phenomena" of vast amounts of foliage falling dead from trees and littering the ground. Where I had been living, that sort of thing simply never happened so nobody ever spoke of it - at all. I would have been quite hard pressed to find any reference data or explanation about it either I bet.
Now I live in a place where it's expected to happen each year and it might be a topic of casual conversation locally if nothing else is occupying people's minds that day. However, if American Idol had been aired the night before, people might prefer to chat about that topic instead. It's a visually stunning event really, yet, the reaction or non-reaction of observers could understandably confuse a new guy like I was at one time. Not confused - just new.
A thought exercise: Suppose a flock of 10,000 birds is migrating across a continent and they are a bit on the late side of the normal range of travel dates due to hanging around longer in warmer weather at their summer habitat. In transit, the weather grows suddenly much colder and the flying conditions deteriorate. Instead of say a normal 2-3 percent die off, the flock suffers a 30 percent die off in a very short time span. Within the impact zone 3,000 dead birds fall to the ground and, of those, 1,000 land within the bounds of a small town. Someone suggests the birds might have eaten poisoned grain or been subject to some other mystery environmental toxin. A local vet or university type collects three birds or so and determines they all expired from exhaustion and were not toxic. The all-clear is sounded and the event resides as just another odd occurrence.
If the dead birds were found to have been infected with an alien fungus from the Andromeda galaxy, it would make a much more exciting story and that seems to be what some people crave. Reality is just more dull by comparison.
If nobody bothered to get a government or university to deeply investigate the event, it probably means the local populace accepted it as within the norm even though it was kind of spectacular to see. People who've been around an area for generations witness weird events like cicadas dying off in huge numbers every thirteen to seventeen years depending on exact species. If a ten year old sees such an event for the first time, it's going to look really spooky, but, to a grandparent who's seen four of these life cycles, it's noteworthy but nothing to call the FBI about.
If the locals did not pull their hair out about the birds in VA, it was likely not such an odd thing as you might think. You might be searching for information that simply does not exist. No study, no story, no paper trail. Just a word-of-mouth little oddity because that's all it ever was.
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shawneeo
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Posted: 07:29PM May 1, 2012 |
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Yes, well, that may be. I haven't been actually searching for info about it... just one time. It was way before the internet and chances are it would not be on the net now unless someone had bothered to enter all the studies/stories whatever of the past thirty years or more. The other thing was that we were kids, so I really don't know if local people did or did not think anything of it. Kids often don't tell anyone about strange things because adults usually don't believe them. My parents knew and they did think it was very strange, but they didn't know who to ask. Also, it was over thirty years ago, so, my memory is faint.
It might have been a common occurrence, and might not have been, we will probably never know. It's not always strange and it's not always commonplace, although usually it is commonplace, like you said. I brought it up because I wanted to know if anyone else had similar stories, and if anyone had any idea how one would research it.
edit: and YES, it would be wonderful if it was a mutant viral strain from the Andromeda Galaxy!
---This message was edited on 07:30PM May 1, 2012---
Life... can be so many things... how can anyone ever think they are RIGHT? HAhahahahahahaha!!!!! |
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idiot_original
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Posted: 01:08PM Aug 14, 2012 |
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Perhaps the aerial spraying of pesticides to kill mosquitos (west nile outbreak) in Dallas will also rid of us the Grackle problem they have been having.
Human intelligence has peaked, and is declining. For proof, see Speaker of House |
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