46 songbirds fall from sky in Boston

Associated Press ^ | Sep 9, 2016 12:13 AM EDT

[Olog-hai]

Health officials in Massachusetts are trying to figure out what caused a large flock of birds to fall out of the sky and onto a Boston street.

NECN reports 46 songbirds were found Thursday in the city’s Dorchester neighborhood.

Some of the grackles were found dead, while others were just sick. …

[dfwgator]

“Oh, the humanity.”

[Fester Chugabrew]

CAHH!

[BigEdLB]

Allah sickbird

[CGASMIA68]

someone sprayed something and they injected it.

Maybe a Zika Freka result ?

[To Hell With Poverty]

Chinese suet?

[RegulatorCountry]

Grackles are not songbirds.

[Rastus]

Rap music floating upward?

[Pontiac]

I never thought of Grackles as a song bird.

I think they are an invasive species too.

[exDemMom]

Maybe something scared them, and they all dropped dead?

I remember that in California, the public health department would occasionally send notices to watch out for large numbers of dead birds, and not to touch them if you found them. They could have an encephalitis virus that is also deadly to humans.

But in Boston, I don’t know... it does not seem like a disease would cause a group of birds to fall out of the sky, dead. But suddenly startling them, or a whiff of poison could do it.

[RegulatorCountry]

Seems like there was fear of “bird fall” with West Nile, if I recall correctly.

[Olog-hai]

I never hear grackles singing songs either. They sound like they have rusty ball bearings for voices.

[grey_whiskers]

Don't tell me it's H5N1....

Let me guess...Avian Zika.

[Pontiac]

I am guessing that they say it is a song bird to tug at our heart strings more effectively and make us think that some major ecological disaster is immanent.

[DesertRhino]

Ive never heard a Grackle called a “songbird”. Boston is odd.

[Carthego delenda est]

Sounds like someone got tired of a flock of Grackles continually in their garden or something and put out some gopher bait (strychnine laced seed) for them.

[Daffynition]

[DesertRhino]

A .177 pellet bounces off the damn things. And they drive away the purple martins that people put birdhouses out for.

[Olog-hai]

It’s about this time of year they start migrating in large flocks, too. When they show up, it’s like a scene from “The Birds”, there are so many of them.

[Vision Thing]

Something like this happened in that tv show FlashForward, when they turned on the haldon collider or some such contraption.