A security video camera caught a chilling footage of a bizarre wildlife event in the city of Cuauhtémoc in northern Mexico: a flock of birds suddenly plummeted out of the sky and slammed into the ground. While most of the birds managed to fly away, dozens of them were left on the ground, apparently dead from the impact.
The birds were a flock of migratory yellow-headed blackbirds (Tordo Cabeza Amarilla or Xanthocephalus xanthocephalus), which migrated to the southwestern United States and Mexico in the winter.
But what could have caused hundreds of birds to fall from the sky like that?
Local newspaper El Heraldo de Chihuahua, which reported the event on February 7th, surmised that the birds were affected by toxic gas or pollution from wood-burning heaters and agricultural chemicals and the cold weather in the area.
Wild guesses and conspiracy theorists had a field day: fanciful theories like avian flu, 5G or collision with an invisible spaceship were touted on various social media posts. Others suggest that the birds hit an electrical power line and were electrocuted.
But ornithologist Kevin J. Mcgowan think that "the only thing that makes sense" was that the birds were fleeing from a predator, and they made a big mistake in swooping down while flying. "This truly was an 'oops' moment for the birds," he said to The Washington Post, "A really big 'oops' moment."
Another ornithologist, ecologist Dr. Richard Broughton with the UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology, concurred. "This looks like a raptor like a peregrine or hawk has been chasing a flock, like they do with murmurating starlings, and they have crashed as the flock was forced low,' he said to The Guardian. 'You can see that they act like a wave at the beginning, as if they are being flushed from above.'
Video credit: Alejandra Herlinda Iglesias Gonzalez via Storyful
Video credit: El Diario de Chihuahua
Images: La Policía Seccional de Álvaro
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