Free Republic

BEEBE, Ark. (AP) -- Preliminary lab results show the blackbirds that fell from the sky in central Arkansas died from blunt force trauma

Witnesses in Italy said thousands of turtle doves fell from the sky, Wednesday, Jan. 5, following a series of incidents in the United States and Sweden. According to residents in the town of Faenza, birds were falling from the sky like “little Christmas balls." The reports are similar to witness accounts from New Year’s Eve when Arkansas partygoers took cover as 4,000 red-winged blackbirds and starlings pinged cars, rooftops and roadways. Unlike birds that died in other areas of the world, the turtle doves were found with a strange blue stain on their beaks. “We have no idea,” a witness...

(CBS/AP) LABARRE, La. - State biologists are trying to determine what killed an estimated 500 birds that littered a quarter-mile stretch of highway in Pointe Coupee Parish. The birds included red-winged blackbirds and starlings. The birds were found Monday along Louisiana Highway 1, about 300 miles south of Beebe, Ark., where more than 3,000 blackbirds fell from the sky three days earlier.

A TV station in the East Texas town of Tyler reports that hundreds more dead birds have been discovered along the sides of a highway bridge. This news adds fresh fuel to a growing conundrum over the cause of hundreds of thousands of avian deaths in localities thousands of miles apart. The station, KLTV, acknowledges that around 200 birds were found dead this morning on state highway 155. The birds, identified as American coots or mud-hens, are the first of this species to be cited in the recent spate of deaths. As with previous cases, the cause of death is...