New mass death of birds in Sweden after the US

Up to 100 birds were found lying in a snow-covered street in Sweden Wednesday, officials said.

"Most were dead," Christer Olofsson of rescue services in the southwestern town of Falkoeping said of the 50 to 100 jackdaw birds, a type of crow.

Ornithologist Anders Wirdheim said the find was surprising.

"This is unusual," he told tabloid Aftonbladet, which posted online a reader's photo of dozens of black birds littering a snow-covered road.

"They are probably jackdaws. They spend the winter in large flocks. If they are exposed to disturbances, they can become so stressed that they fly themselves to death," he said.

On Tuesday the Los Angeles Times reported around 500 red-winged blackbirds and starlings being found dead littering Louisiana, leaving mystery behind their deaths.

Yet in another puzzling incident, around 5,000 blackbirds fell dead from the sky in Beebe, a small town in Arkansas, 300 miles away from Louisiana.

Officials and scientists told the LA Times that there is no connection between the two incidents.

“Mass bird die-offs can be caused by starvation, storms, disease, pesticides, collisions with manmade structures or human disturbance,” said Greg Butcher, director of bird conservation from the U.S.-based Audubon for protection of wildlife.

“Scientists are still investigating what happened to the birds in Louisiana and Arkansas, but initial findings indicate that these are isolated incidents that were probably caused by disturbance and disorientation.”

Audubon said it’s not unusual to have mass deaths of birds like this, and added that there were around 90 different mass deaths of birds in the U.S. between June and December of last year, Audubon claims.

Possible explanations

Experts so far mulled that the birds may have had suffered internal trauma, which could have happened if a single flock had suddenly got caught in a violent and unusual storm.

“Or, it has been speculated, a local fireworks display could have startled the birds so badly that they were unable to prevent themselves from flying into trees, pylons and houses,” the London-based The Guardian reported.

Others such as allvoices.com, a U.S. news website, theorized that the Gulf of Mexico oil spill maybe the reason behind the bird deaths. It is estimated that around two million gallons of Corexit was poured in the gulf since April 2010.

“Corexit goes through a molecular change when it comes into contact with warm water; it changes from a liquid to a gas and evaporates into clouds.”

The website quoted a a report prepared for President Medvedev by Russia’s Ministry of Natural Resources that warned that the “BP oil spill would be the worst environmental catastrophe in all of human history, threatening the entire eastern half of the North American continent.”

The Russian study warned of years of toxic oil rain, resulting in profound changes in the ecosystem.

“Could nine months of toxic oil rain have somehow concentrated in these two areas, causing the death of the birds, and more than 100,000 fish in the same area at the same time? Could the birds have ingested contaminated prey?” it added.

Psychic digest

Psychics have their own "sober" explanation. Gerald Ryder, a self-proclaimed psychic from Pittsburg, Pennsylvania told Todaysthv.com, an Arkansas news website, that he has several theories behind the incident.

One is that a time travel device was activated at the time of the bird deaths caused a tear in the "time travel continuum" resulting in shock and deaths for the birds, and another one being is that a spacecraft may have hit the flock of the area and crashed into the Arkansas River, explaining the dead fish found along the river's banks.

And his last theory said that “an early Indian tribe in Arkansas was entrusted with the care of the Arc of the Covenant centuries ago and placed it in Beebe where it resides today. Ryder says the Arc was awakened by "something of consciousness" that killed the birds to draw attention.”

Others opted for a religious explanation. Allison Warden, a Chrisitan who believes 21, 2011 as the official Judgment Day for all mankind, said "We do not look to the world for explanations of the Bible, but to the Bible for explanations of the world. This date is a mathematical calculation from the Bible.”

Although Warden did not give a cause to the bird deaths, she said these types of occurrences should be expected.