Over 3,000 Birds Mysteriously Die, Fall from Sky in Arkansas

Here’s a crazy story (thanks to one of our loyal readers, Kristen Farquhar, for passing it on to me). On New Year’s Eve in the small Arkansas town of Beebe, blackbirds starting raining down from the sky. Concerned citizens called the odd occurrence in and once the Game and Fish Commission confirmed this wasn’t a prank, it sent one of its wildlife officers to look into it — sure enough, blackbirds had fallen from the sky.

Environmental services collected 2,000 of the dead birds but say the total number killed is over 3,000. Some they couldn’t get to and some were certainly snatched up by scavengers like cats.

It is quite clear the birds died from “blunt trauma.” “The birds obviously hit something very hard and had hemorrhages,” said Karen Rowe, Arkansas Game and Fish Commission ornithologist.

The reports starting coming in after a series of loud noises:

Neighbors reported five to 12 booming noises in the eastern part of Beebe, a community of 5,000 northeast of Little Rock. “They reported it sounding like a cannon or transformer exploding,” but officials are still investigating to find out what the noises were, Rowe said.

Fireworks?

So, what did the birds hit. Well, that’s the question. Here are some ideas, as well as reasons why they don’t make sense:

  • maybe it was a fast-acting pesticide (no, “because they would have eaten it during the day and died long before they began to roost at night”);
  • maybe it was a slow-acting pesticide (no, because it “wouldn’t have affected them all at the same time”);
  • maybe it was a hail storm (unlikely, as “they would have had to be flying for that to happen, and at that hour red-wing blackbirds are asleep”);
  • bad weather had hit the region on Friday,.. maybe lightning or hail could have caused the death (but a local forecaster said that the worst of that weather was well east of Beebe by the time the birds died);
  • maybe the birds were scared by some loud fireworks and started flying but tried to avoid the upper sky due to the fireworks and flew into buildings and other obstructions (Robert Meese, an avian ecologist at the University of California-Davis, says: “I don’t see any way that they could have flown into obstructions, because then the birds should have been at the base of the objects. … This was a scattering.”)

Well, we’re running out of ideas here.

“It’s the craziest thing I’ve ever experienced and I’ve been doing this for 25 years,” Keith Stephens of the Game and Fish Commission says. “I’ll bet you I’ve had 100 calls today, I’ve done 25 interviews. I did Al-Jazeera live last night.”

I would have to lean towards thinking the birds were hit by hail, fireworks themselves, or were scared by the fireworks and flew into buildings and other obstructions (of course, there are reasons above why each of those possibilities may not be true).

If you have any more knowledge on this matter, please share it below.

Related Stories:
1. Birds Fall from the Sky in More Places
2. More Possible Explanations for Mass Bird Deaths, Birds Falling from Sky

3. Mass Bird & Fish Deaths Caused by Hydraulic Fracking & Earthquakes?
4. Sudden Fish Kills, Bird Die-offs, and Other “Fortean” Events

Photo Credit: Warren Watkins/AP via USA TODAY

39 thoughts on “Over 3,000 Birds Mysteriously Die, Fall from Sky in Arkansas”

  1. All it says is that the Gospel will be preached unto all the world, and then the end will come. Check out thetrumpet.com, the Gospel has already been preached to all the world, but people don’t want to hear it

  2. I see that FRACKING natural gas extraction is newly a global phenomenon and appears to be deathly toxic. Is there a correlation between the bird, fish death sites and FRACKING sites?

  3. See the thing is if they hit buildings they would be at the base of the buildings like think about when a bird hits your window its always at the base of it not far away, and it says they’d have to hit something very hard well what the hell are they going to hit hard when their flying? AND WHAT ABOUT THE FISH?

  4. Perhaps there was some kind of sonic boom. Maybe sonar’s were being tested somewhere and the frequency of them created a sonic boom that only affected the birds. Although why would it only affect one species of bird? I’m not buying the firework theory at all. Fireworks have been used for many years surely this would have happened before if fireworks were to blame.

  5. There was a film featuring birds falling from the sky and fish floating on the water. It’s something to do with the leaking of a certain gas. There may have been a shift change in either land mass or the core of the earth. This will release deadly gasses and funnily enough yes, this isn’t a good sign.

  6. Well you never know what could happen to these poor pitiful birds. Could they have been hit by a plane? The strange part is how could all of them die at one time? I’m very concerned on how this happen and why? Something needs to be done we need answers.

  7. M. Night Shyamalan, The Happening. Its actually happening!! First the birds turn on themselves, then aquatic creatures, next will be the land animals. We’re in with the land animals’ group.
    Mad world.

  8. So here is what I understand:

    3,000 blackbirds fall dead from the sky!

    No Toxins (poisons)found in autopsy
    No In path obstructions to hit
    No “Direct” weather related issues

    People heard loud “Booms” from a neighboring location just prior to the bird death event…

    Here’s my untrained theory… ‘Fireworks’. The first couple of booms would have disturbed the birds on the ground level… They fly up in panic, the next explosions killed the birds as the bird flew into a concussion path of the explosions… The concussion waves hitting the birds would cause internal damage/internal bleeding thus explaining the hemeraging found within the dead birds. If any one of the explosions went off near ground level, (a rouge firework), that would do it as well would it not. It’s a fluke to say the least…

    Just as police or military use “flash bang” or concussion grenades to disorient or immobilize an enemy with light & concussion effects, imagine a flock of frightened and somewhat disoriented birds flying into the explosion path of a fireworks display. You know not the pretty flowering fireworks but the “cannon like” booms. Kind of like going fishing with a stick of dynamite or a hand grenade… Same basic effect! The birds would take internal damages that would cause internal bleeding over time and excellerated by the exertion of flight and panic. They litterally bled to death while in flight…

    I’d be curious to find out if there is a death path leading back to the source or location of the “BOOMS”?

    1. yeah,.. i think your idea is the most plausible. experts say the birds would have been sleeping and being woken by the fireworks they would not fly so high,.. but… (seems like a good answer to me)

  9. There is a new gas pipeline stretching across that part of the state from Beebe to NW Arkansas. There was a drum fish die off in NW arkansas near the line.

    I have heard there has been a lot of exploratory mining for natural gas all along that area. There have been numerous small earthquakes in nearby Guy Arkansas.

    Loud noises were heard prior to the dead bird fall

    The birds show evidence of physical trauma (they smacked into something)

    My guess: A pocket of methane gas blew from the gas mining area. The birds passed out. Trauma was induced when they smacked into the ground or a building.

    The drum fish kill could also be a gas related thing

  10. Perhaps there were aircraft flying at supersonic speed and the sonic boom was what knocked the birds out of the sky.

  11. I drove through the town of Beebe on thursday afternoon, the day before the birds fell out of the sky and I looked out one window of our vehicle. To the left of us in the air were thousands of blackbirds. I was in absolute awe it looked like something out of the movie, The Birds by Alfred Hitchcock. My step father works in Beebe and he said that there is always that many of them every day when he drives by the particular area that they roost in. It was some sight. I’d really like to know why they fell out of the sky though, that’s bizarre.

  12. A lot of people are saying this could possibly be a simple warning..exactly a year away from new years eve of 2012. They say that will be the end. What do you think?

  13. Could it be possible that the birds were ‘run over’ in the sky by someting moving very fast? Could the noise be a sonic boom from a fast moving aircraft or ‘other’ type of vehicle? Just saying, birds just don’t fall out of the sky with blunt force trama…

    1. the birds should have been sleeping at the time,.. this is the thing (but perhaps woken up by fireworks).. still, though, seems unlikely it was a plane… shouldn’t have been so high in the air

  14. When I read this I was reminded of the movie “The Core”. Some may say the movie is fiction but this is a very strange incident that should be looked into. I am sure that they are investigating all options even if they do not tell us. IN GOD WE TRUST!

  15. The question I have is this…
    What time did the birds start falling?
    If it was possible fireworks, what time did the fireworks go off?
    What connection could it have with the 100,000 drum fish that died less than 2 hours away (much less as the bird flies)?

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