I think if we actually investigated it, it would be a far more common occurrence than we realize. The world is a very big place, with billions of creatures on it. Probably right now, as I'm typing this, somewhere out there, there's violent electrical storms, blizzards, flash floods, tornadoes, horrible straight line winds, searing temperatures, etc, etc, etc. It just happens to be that the media has decided it's more important. Kind of like them deciding that right wing political rhetoric is responsible for lunatic killing sprees.
Could be true. However, the “its just reported more these days” or “they just decided to report it” rationalizations may catch us with our pants down someday on something important.
Recall the so-called summer of the shark, when it seemed every beach had a man-killer devouring hapless swimmers.
Then someone did the math, and it turned out the number of attacks was slightly below average globally. It's just that the media was reporting them all in screaming detail, making it seem like an onslaught.
Regards the LA bird deaths, the USGS guy said there had been 16 such incidents reported just in the last 30 years.
This type of thing does, quite literally, happen all the time.
It’s just like the supposed “surge” in school shootings when the reality is they have dropped. These days when I listen to the news I sometimes wonder if all these people were born yesterday. It’s as if nothing ever happened before...or if it did, surely it wasn’t this bad. We have a real problem nowadays in that there seems to be not just a rewritten history, but a complete disregard for it.