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Comment by ck2 | Hacker News Reader

They are up to 5,000+ dead blackbirds now in that one town.

I find that highly disturbing. If it was 5,000 across the USA, it would be worrisome and sad but somehow in one place (and then more in another place) gets the "alarming" label for me.

Don't forget all the fish-kills and how they now think the mass bee extinction is from seemingly EPA approved pesticides.

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I listened to an explanation of this earlier (I will see if I can find documentation) -- the blackbirds travel in extremely large flocks and follow a leader very tightly (much closer in proximity to each other than most birds). The birds travel at night and can be disoriented by things such as fireworks, lightning, or other flashing lights. If the leading bird is disoriented, it could cause the bird to fly directly into the ground, a building, or any other large bird-killing object. This leads to an almost lemming-like mass suicide of the flock.

I also believe that it has been documented to have happened fairly regularly. The numbers I heard today were 16 times in the past 30 years there has been a mass death of over 1000 birds.

Found this regarding mass animal deaths -- http://www.nwhc.usgs.gov/mortality_events/ongoing.jsp

5,000 birds across the country? That's about one for every area the size of Rhode Island. Blackbirds are the most abundant kind of bird on this continent. A few thousand here or there is literally not going to make any difference. This is not nearly on the same scale as the bee crisis.

Edit: Even if there are only 10 million blackbirds living at any given time (I'm sure there are more), and they have a lifespan of 5 years, that's a turnover of 5,400 on an average day.

Considering a flock of blackbirds can consist of several million birds, 5000 aren't actually that many. Numbers like that are only relevant in context.

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