Over the years, I’ve seen several reports of mysterious bird die-offs. Sometimes thousands of birds just seemingly fall out of the sky, either already dead, or dying when they hit the ground. Such a scene is disturbing and frightening. What is going on?
I am inclined to suggest that at least some of these events were caused by noxious gases. Birds are particularly vulnerable to fumes and poisonous gases. In the past, coal miners often carried a few canaries down into the mine with them. If there was dangerous amounts of poisonous gas, the birds would stop singing and drop from their perches. It was an early warning for the men to get out of there.
I had a friend who had a cage full of birds. She started cooking on a non-stick surface, and suddenly some of her birds just died. Evidently heating that Teflon surface released enough toxic fumes to kill the birds.
I especially think this could explain the occasional die-off where the birds seem to drop dead at about the same place they had done before. Might there not be some factory or industry that released a poisonous gas? It needn’t be one that’s dangerous to humans. Even a little bit could kill birds. And possibly that’s what happened..