What I find most interesting is that the first or close to first comment posts on many of the articles * feature people claiming that the congregation of Red-Winged Black Birds is unusual. And some claim to have degrees in a related field to give them some credibility.
My main source of North American bird info comes from my copy of The Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Birds Eastern Region, published in 1977.
pg 442 , continued description for Red-Winged Black Bird " Although primarily a marsh bird, the Red-wing will nest near virtually any body of water and occasionally breeds in upland pastures. Each Pair raises two or three broods a season, building a new nest for each clutch. After breeding season, the birds gather with other blackbirds in flocks sometimes numbering in the hundreds of thousands or millions and have come to be viewed as a health hazard. Attempts have been made to reduce such flocks by spraying and other methods."
and as is stated at the Cornell All About Birds Lab website
-
Behavior
Male Red-winged Blackbirds do everything they can to get noticed, sitting on high perches and belting out their conk-la-ree! song all day long. Females stay lower, skulking through vegetation for food and quietly weaving together their remarkable nests. In winter Red-winged Blackbirds gather in huge flocks to eat grains with other blackbird species and starlings.
http://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Red-winged_Blackbird/id
The birds congregating is quite normal.
So the real question remains what caused this?
So far the only some what plausible answer is on the Capital Weather Gang blog at the Washington Post.
post at the 7:30pm update
"The director of Cornell University's ornithology lab in Ithaca, N.Y., said the most likely suspect is violent weather. It's probable that thousands of birds were asleep, roosting in a single tree, when a "washing machine-type thunderstorm" sucked them up into the air, disoriented them, and even fatally soaked and chilled them."
and then the
9:30 p.m. update: The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) is reporting (h/t commenter JerryFloyd) the birds likely died as a result of booming noise, perhaps fireworks, in central Arkansas Friday. The noise may have incited a bird frenzy causing them to fly into houses and trees. The WSJ story states storms weren't in the area when the birds died. On the other hand, the radar shows storms departing the region between 9 and 10 p.m. central time. The birds reportedly started falling from the sky around 11 p.m.
source: http://voices.washingtonpost.com/capitalweathergang/2011/01/did_lightning_cause_mass_bird.html
So I would agree some sort of updraft/down draft would be an acceptable answer. It is just troubling that most news agencies are not reporting this and it makes room for some kind of giant conspiracy at hand.
I cant rule out some sort of conspiracy, whether it being intentionally killing of the birds via some sort of man made contraption using focused waves thus causing the loud noise accompanied with the incident, or just shooting them but covering it up.
The point is, don't trust all that is read on-line, especially when it comes down to so called "credible sources" making public comments on the news article.
I hope we find out what really caused this. And I hope that it is in fact some bizarre case of weather.
But it seems coincidental that there was another case of Red-Wing Black Bird deaths in Labarre, Louisiana.
So maybe it was all caused by the rogue zombie satellite that just so happen to come back to life in the past week after a few weeks back interfering with NOAA's weather satellite. seems a little too coincidental...... *wink wink*
*http://www.cnn.com/2011/US/01/03/arkansas.falling.birds/index.html?hpt=T2
UPDATE: I was also just informed about a massive fish kill that occurred near Beebe Arkansas as well. seems too coincidental.
http://www.cnn.com/2011/US/01/02/arkansas.fish.kill/index.html?hpt=T2
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