A curious phenomenon observed in the state of Chihuahua, in northern Mexico, has intrigued the Internet: images showing hundreds of birds diving in unison before crashing to the ground have gone viral, sparking all kinds of interpretations.
“Everything seemed calm on this residential street in Cuauhtémoc – a town in the state of Chihuahua, Mexico – when a flock of birds suddenly fell from the sky”, relates the Washington Post. And “most of them were flying uphill”specifies the American daily, “quantity of others ended up on the ground, in the state of black and yellow corpses”. A dismal scene, captured on February 7 by a CCTV camera and whose images relayed on social networks have gone viral.
It was a group of yellow-headed blackbirds, a migratory species that was “described for the first time in 1825 by the nephew of the Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte”, specifies the title. The video, relayed below by the American channel Fox10, has given rise to various explanations for the causes of their strange behavior:
Video of WHRAKowr67s
The tracks mentioned by Internet users, relays the Washington Postwere going “from electrocution after contact with a power line to more exotic theories, for example the effect of 5G or a collision with an invisible spacecraft”. Le journal local The Herald of Chihuahua has hypothesized that migratory birds may have suffered from “high levels of atmospheric pollution due to wood heating, the use of phytosanitary products and low temperatures”.
“A big ‘oops’ moment”
For Kevin J. McGowan, American ornithologist interviewed by the Washington Post, “the only logical explanation is that the birds were fleeing a predator and miscalculated their move”. Indeed, when they are pursued by predators such as hawks or owls – present in the State of Chihuahua –, “these birds come together closely to form a dense fray”, says the specialist. Corn “their method of survival sometimes fails” : they can make errors of calculation as for the distances which separate them from the ground. And the scientist concludes:
It was an ‘oops’ moment. A big ‘oops’ moment.”