Friday, September 18, 2020

Mass bird die-off in southwestern USA probably climate related

Hundreds of thousands, even millions of songbirds heve been literally falling out of the sky in the southwest of the United States. Birds migrating south from Canada and Alaska to their overwintering grounds in Central and South America, have been dying off en masse in New Mexico, Colorado, Texas, Arizona and Nebraska. Inititially, the cause was a mystery, but increasingly it looks like a combination of climate change and the raging wildfires along the west coast of America (arguably also due to change) are to blame.

The dead birds appear to have little remaining fat reserves or muscle mass, and are quite literally starving to the point where they can no longer fly. It is thought that the birds have had to alter their migration route away from the resource-rich coastal areas, which are now a deadly conflagration of flames and smoke, and head instead through the resource-poor desert lands in the interior, which are particularly dry and hot at the moment due to a long-lasting, climate crisis-induced drought. It is also possible that their lungs are suffering some damage from all the smoke along their route. There are some reports that migrating birds have also been behaving erratically (e.g. tree-dwelling birds hopping along the ground in search of insects). Local resident birds do not seem to be affected.

Just another Biblical, weird happening. We should be used to them by now.

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