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I recorded these images for Las Fotos de los Lectores de La Vanguardia after finding numerous dead starlings and sparrows on the ground this morning, in the Calaf industrial estate, in the Anoia region.
And that I have only recorded in this section of the street, where the images of the video speak for themselves. What could have happened? Why have so many birds died at once? Is it the effects of the last summer storm?
The truth is that, apparently, as has been recorded in other cases, for example, in the United States, when the weather is adverse, birds can see their sense of orientation altered with deadly consequences.
So much so that a storm, especially if it is nocturnal, can cause birds to become disoriented and crash into the ground or a building violently.
In fact, in the last 30 years there have been at least 16 large incidents of mass deaths of birds blamed on storms, as they appeared dead on the ground.
In January 2011, a shower of hundreds of dead birds took place in Louisiana just days after an avalanche of thousands of birds fell from the sky in Arkansas.
Starlings do not fly in the dark. They spend their nights grouped in places they consider safe and do not come out unless forced to, such as during a noisy summer storm.
And if the wind also forces them to fly low, the result can be fatal, as happened in the Swedish town of Falköping, where dozens of birds died from internal bleeding caused by “extreme physical violence.”
