Tornado anyone!
Was what I was thinking. Birds like to ride thermals, maybe they rode on the wrong one.
In fact, didn’t a bunch of strong storms with tornadoes go through earlier in the day in parts of Arkansas before the birds fell? Is it possible that the tornado sucked in a whole bunch of birds and they fell down many miles away after the storm passed?
I think you nailed it. We had a tornadic thunderstorm just north of Beebe on Friday morning. Could have sucked up the entire flock to freezing altitudes.