THOUSANDS of birds have fallen from the skies over Esperance and no one knows why.Is it an illness, toxins or a natural phenomenon? A string of autopsies in Perth have shed no light on the mystery.All the residents of flood-devastated Esperance know is that their "dawn chorus" of singing birds is missing.The main casualties are wattle birds, yellow-throated miners, new holland honeyeaters and singing honeyeaters, although some dead crows, hawks and pigeons have also been found.Wildlife officers are baffled by the "catastrophic" event, which the Department of Environment and Conservation said began well before last week's freak storm.On Monday, Esperance, 725km southeast of Perth, was declared a natural disaster zone.District nature conservation co-ordinator Mike Fitzgerald said the first reports of birds dropping dead in people's yards came in three weeks ago. More than 500 deaths had since been notified. But the calls stopped suddenly last week, reportedly because no birds were left."It's very substantial. We estimate several thousand birds are dead, although we don't have a clear number because of the large areas of bushland," Mr Fitzgerald said.Birds Australia, the nation's main bird conservation group, said it had not heard of a similar occurrence. "Not on that scale, and all at the same time, and also the fact that it's several different species," chief executive Graeme Hamilton said. "You'd have to call that a most unusual event and one that we'd all have to be concerned about."He expected birds would return to the area once the problem - natural or man-made phenomenon - was fixed but said it was vital the cause was identified.The Department of Agriculture and Food, which conducted the autopsies, has almost ruled out an infectious process.Acting chief veterinary officer Fiona Sunderman said toxins were the most likely cause but the deaths could be due to anything from toxic algae to chemicals and pesticides.Dr Sunderman said there were no leads yet on which of potentially hundreds of toxins might be responsible. Some birds were seen convulsing as they died.Michelle Crisp was one of the first to contact the DEC after finding dozens of dead birds on her property one morning.She told The Australian she normally had hundreds of birds in her yard, but that she and a neighbour counted 80 dead birds in one day."It went to the point where we had nothing, not a bird," she said."It was like a moonscape, just horrible. But the frightening thing for us, we didn't find any more birds after that. We literally didn't have any birds left to die."
Thousands of Dead Birds
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The mysterious catastrophe has taken place over a period of three weeks in Esperance, about 450 miles southeast of Perth. The area was declared a disaster zone by government officials. So far, authorities are clueless as to the cause. Autopsies on the birds have shed no light. The main casualties, according to Australian news sources, are wattle birds, yellow-throated miners, new holland honeyeaters and singing honeyeaters. Some dead crows, hawks and pigeons have also been found. Some birds were seen convulsing when they died. Wildlife officers are baffled by what they characterize as a "catastrophic" event. It does not appear to be weather-related
It could be the plot of a horror film, but in two towns on opposite sides of the world the mysterious phenomenon of thousands of dead birds dropping out of the sky is all too real.Officials are baffled by the unexplained deaths which have affected Australia and the U.S.Three weeks ago thousands of crows, pigeons, wattles and honeyeaters fell out of the sky in Esperance, Western Australia.Then last week dozens of grackles, sparrows and pigeons dropped dead on two streets in Austin, Texas.As birds continue to die in Esperance and the town's dawn chorus remains eerily silent, vets in both countries have been unable to establish a cause of death - despite carrying out a large number of autopsies on the birds.Wildlife officials from Western Australia's Department of Environment and Conservation said they were baffled by the "catastrophic event" but emphasised the deaths had nothing to do with a severe storm which recently struck the area, as the birds had started dying before then. District nature conservation coordinator Mike Fitzgerald said: "It's very substantial."We estimate several thousand birds are dead, although we don't have a clear number because of the large areas of bushland."Birds Australia, the country's largest bird conservation group, said it had not heard of a similar occurrence."You'd have to call it a most unusual event and one that we'd all have to be concerned about," said chief executive Graeme Hamilton.Dr Fiona Sunderman, chief veterinary officer of the Department of Agriculture and Food, suspects the cause of death is some form of toxic poisoning.Esperance resident Michelle Crisp, who normally sees hundreds of birds roosting in her garden, counted 80 dead ones in one day."It went to the point where we had nothing, not a single bird," she said. "It was like a moonscape - just horrible."In Texas, officials are also working on the toxic poisoning theory. Adolfo Valadez, medical director for Austin and Travis County Health and Human Services, said it might be weeks before any conclusive results were known.Such was the concern that the birds suffered deliberate toxic poisoning that several streets were closed in Austin while police and fire crews checked the area for any substance that might be of harm to humans."This was a precautionary measure. We certainly take these kinds of thing seriously, especially following 9/11," said Mr Valadez. "It may be a matter of time before we know what happened and why it happened. There is no threat to public health."Federal officials in Washington said they were monitoring the situation, but a spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security said: "There is no credible intelligence to suggest an imminent threat to the homeland or Austin at this time."
IDAHO - December 13, 2006 - Officials scrambled to determine what has caused the deaths of thousands of mallard ducks in south-central Idaho near the Utah border. Although wildlife experts are downplaying any links to bird flu, they have sent samples to government labs to test for the deadly H5N1 flu strain, among other pathogens. Wildlife officials are calling the massive die-off alarming, with the number of dead mallards rising from 1,000 on Tuesday to more than 2,000 by Wednesday afternoon. "We've never seen anything like this - ever." Preliminary findings by state veterinarians suggest the mallards succumbed to a bacterial infection, officials said. They said it was unclear why a similar outbreak had never before occurred in Idaho. The only mallard die-off roughly equivalent in recent years happened in Waterloo, Iowa in 2005, when 500 ducks died from a fungus they contracted by eating moldy grain. Early clues suggest the outbreak in Idaho is not linked to insecticides applied to surrounding croplands because it is not affecting other bird species or predators feeding on the dead ducks. EARLIER INSTANCES OF MASS BIRD DEATHS - July 5, 2006 - CALIFORNIA - Dead, sickly birds wash up on Calif. beach. Bird rescuers believe dozens of dead and sickly baby terns washed up suddenly on beaches here after something scared them out of their nests on an abandoned barge and into the water, where they couldn't swim. Rescuers collected the bodies of about 200 Caspian and elegant tern chicks after getting calls from lifeguards earlier in the day on June 28th. The birds were all about a month old and many hadn't even grown feathers yet. The die-off comes just days after an unusual number of starving and weak baby pelicans showed up on area beaches in northern California. 3/29/06 - WEST COAST OF NORTH AMERICA - Once again, things are starting to look weird along the West Coast. A rash of BIRD DEATHS has scientists wondering if they're seeing a repeat of last year, when they were alarmed by throngs of dead birds washing up on beaches, underfed whales and the failure of Washington's largest seabird-nesting colony, among other developments. Like last year, scientists say, this year's bird deaths appear related to changes in the marine food web that they still don't understand but that look as if they are related to unusual weather. Many are so scrawny that researchers say it's virtually a foregone conclusion that they starved to death. Dead birds have been turning up along the Pacific coast from the Columbia River south to about Newport, Ore., and in British Columbia. "There's something happening. ... We've got signals that there's something amiss." Researchers are convinced that much of what they saw in 2005 was related to an interruption of the normal spring weather patterns, with overly warm, nutrition-poor ocean water hanging around when cold, food-filled ocean water normally moves in. They say it's easy to see why that happened: Wind that usually kicks up this time of year failed to do so. But they don't know why the wind didn't blow. 3/22/06 - OREGON - hundreds of seabirds have been washing up dead among the plastic bottles, styrofoam, wood and other junk in the driftline on South Coast beaches this month. Hundreds of carcasses of rhinoceros auklets, possibly as many as 20 or 30 per mile, have been reported since Sunday, the 12th. Some are just a jumble of bones or scrap of skin with a beak or legs attached. Those are the hard ones for people to identify. Drizzle, gusty winds and ultimately pounding storms have smashed into Oregon off and on for almost three months. “The questions in my mind are: Is this something that's widespread in Oregon? Is it a freak event like a storm or something that's going to last longer?” asked a seabird researcher. There were no reports of an increase of dead auklets washing up on Washington's shores, nor in California. Populations at seabird colonies off San Francisco look normal at the start of breeding season. Rhinoceros auklets live most of their lives at sea. They are scrappy, constant flyers. They are deep divers. Their health can give clues about the health of the ocean's food chain. Countless thousands likely winter in the waters off Oregon, though no one knows for sure how many because few folks venture tens and hundreds of miles onto the stormy Pacific for winter research. And as to whether the die-off will be harmful, no one knows. One man has checked the same stretch of beach every day for almost thirty years. He found 45 rhino auks in the first 13 days of the month. It blew apart his record over the past 28 years that was for 13 dead ones for the entire month of March. “This isn't a storm kind of incident. The birds we checked are very thin. At the time they first showed, there was no storm.” February 15, 2006 - ILLINOIS - SNOW GEESE - dead snow geese found southeast of Springfield spread across 4 miles in early January probably died after severe wather caused the birds to crash into the ground. The storm that killed the birds was probably the same one that created a "microburst" of straight-line winds that toppled utility poles and damaged mobile homes on January 2. The birds were not poisoned, as many people first suspected. "The medical examiner's report said that the lesions observed in the snow geese were consistent with the birds falling from the sky, rupturing internal organs and bleeding internally. " Finding the dead birds spread across a large area was strange, because birds that have been poisoned often are found clustered together. The examiner said this is the first time in 14 years he has heard of a case of bird deaths that turned out to be weather-related. “This flock was probably in the wrong place at the wrong time.” While severe weather may have been the cause this time, people who discover large numbers of dead birds should not dismiss the event as normal.
This is horrible, Kriss ( not that there aren't a gazillion horrible things happening everyday in this world ), but I sense this is significant in some way. These birds are dying an agonizing death, any speculation, Kriss?
I have no idea Ros I like you just feel like this is important somehow. In the way miners use canarys to warn them of bad air Birds are very senitive to their enviroment I think birds and fish can be our first alerts that something is wrong. The fact that it seems to be in so many different areas some thousands of miles apart and seems to be getting worse not just a one time thing I find very alarming. I could make some guesses but that is all they would be is speculation.
A mass death of poultry has occurred in the village of Boyuk Bahmanli in the Fuzuli region. They said that mass death of poultry was observed in several yards and they appealed to the veterinary service. The reasons for the deaths are unknown. Many dead fowl were found in the water basins of the village, as well as in the ponds on the neutral strip on border with Iran. State Veterinary Service press secretary Yolchu Khanveli told the APA they are unaware of the situation and noted that they will investigate. He said that bird flu virus was not found in this territory during initial monitoring. He also said the reasons for the die-off may be other diseases. H5N1 virus was found in birds in one of the farms in the village of Boyuk Bahmanli during 2006.
I wonder what's going on here.
I wonder what's going on here.
I wonder if there is any relation to the increased reports of Methane gas escaping from the ocean floorhttp://www.christianityboard.com/methane-g...p=6235#post6235
There is a reason for the bird deaths, but whether we are not being told what is already known, or whether whose who say there is no reason are ignorant to why these deaths are occuring, it is not a coincendence.Could these birds be the quintessential 'canaries in a coal mine' and are indeed a warning of something greater to come? I would be of the opinion we are not being told all the facts and the bird deaths mean something other than just happenstance.
February 14, 2007CBS NewsSAN JOSE, Costa Rica - Authorities in Costa Rica said Tuesday they are investigating the mysterious deaths of about 500 brown pelicans along the country's Pacific coast over the last five days but do not suspect bird flu was the cause.The first dead birds were spotted by a fisherman on Thursday on San Lucas Island, about 10 miles from the coastal city of Punta Arenas. More turned up in the following days at nearby islands and rivers."This is a situation that is enormously worrisome," Costa Rican Environment Minister Roberto Dobles said. "But it is hard to know what happened, and so it is better not to speculate."Investigators were collecting tissue samples from the dead birds, but tests to determine the cause of death may take several days, said National Animal Health Service spokesman Flor Aguero.Coast Guard marine biologist Carmen Castro said investigators do not think the deaths were caused by bird flu, which is primarily spread by migration.Brown pelicans are not migratory birds, and form stable, permanent colonies. They are not considered an endangered or protected species in Costa Rica.Health Minister Maria Luisa Avila said while agriculture and animal health officials are in charge of the investigation, hospitals have been checked for possible cases of diseases likeWest Nile virus that could infect both birds and humans.Mosquitoes can spread that disease by biting infected birds and then biting humans. Avila said no such cases have been found so far.
signature above: "Amo 8:11 Behold, the days come, saith the Lord GOD, that I will send a famine in the land, not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the LORD."
Yes.
Remember "silent spring" and the sequel. massive fish kills, etc... by poisons... covered up.... only becoming worse ....
Yes.
Remember "silent spring" and the sequel. massive fish kills, etc... by poisons... covered up.... only becoming worse ....
Not sure what you expect her to say, she hasn’t been on the forum since 2011 - this happened in 2007.
Rita
Rita
I didn’t notice it at first myself , there a couple of threads floating around from that time frame xx
Rita x
Rita x
The toxic world , spiritually dead, uncaring, death-dealing (pernicious), goes on, increasing in wickednesses and sin (and posts) daily....
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