Who’s killing Tweety & Sylvester? Birds, cat drop dead mysteriously in Boston

 Published time: 10 Sep, 2016 02:27Edited time: 10 Sep, 2016 03:40

A Boston neighborhood is puzzled. Dozens of birds falling from trees to their deaths, along with a dead cat, are leaving officials guessing what could have caused the inexplicable plague.

"When I arrived, birds would fly, like from a house to a tree, they would flop in the tree and they would fall to the ground,"Alan Borgal of the Animal Rescue League of Boston (ARL) told local NECN news. "The weaker ones were just falling right out the sky." 

Unlike in the cartoons, the chief suspect in the birds' mystery deaths doesn't seem to be a cat (or even vice-versa).

A resident called the ARL Thursday, reporting her cat Sally suddenly falling sick and birds massively falling from the trees at 33 Bakersfield Street in Boston’s Dorchester neighborhood.

She described the birds as “lethargic, trying to roll over, not able to stand up or fly.”

The ARL provided treatment to the cat, but the feline ended up dying.

“My sister fed her,” Sally’s owner Willien Pugh told the Boston Herald.“Then like at 8:30 she came to the door and told me Sally was laying there at the back door, and that was it. Nobody knows who did it or nothing.”

Continued  

Rare ‘Naomi Campbell’ bird visits RSPB Frampton Marsh

Gemma Gadd

10:37Thursday 05 May 2016

Twitchers and wildlife photographers are flocking to RSPB Frampton Marsh to catch a glimpse of a rare bird to Britain’s shores.

The black-winged stilt was pictured at the nature reserve near Boston enjoying a wade around the wetlands and looking for food.

The site’s visitor experience manager Chris Andrews said: “Sometimes referred to as the Naomi Campbell of the bird world, due it its elegance and incredibly long legs, the black-winged stilt should be in the Mediterranean but instead arrived here on Tuesday. Maybe it heard the weather report for the weekend?”

The sighting has attracted bird-watchers to the site from as far afield as Yorkshire and Hertfordshire.

Mr Andrews said only a couple of the birds were seen in the UK each year - but numbers have gone up slightly in recent years to around a dozen ‘due to global warming’.

It is, however, the fourth year in a row the RSPB site has been visited by a solo black-winged stilt.

“We do a lot of work making the reserve absolutely brilliant for birds - and the wildlife is flourishing as a result,” Mr Andrews added. “We are swiftly gaining a reputation not just as one of the best reserves in Lincolnshire, but in the whole UK.”

Read more: 

Talking rook and sex change chicken: bizarre birds from our archives

An unusual pet with an even more unusual human characteristic lived at the home of Maureen Blackman in Boston’s Spilsby road.

The bird became a part of the family and would sit on her shoulder, put its head against her cheek and say ‘Come on then, I’m going’ and ask where their cat Fluff was.

“He’s a very wise old bird and knows what I say to him,” said Mrs Blackwell. “He sits at the window and caws to people he knows as they walk by.”

Despite being domesticated,Blackie would still attempt to build a nest each year – using whatever bits and pieces he could find in the couple’s garden.

He was given baths in their garden and the kitchen sink, and given treats like boiled eggs and cucumber.

1943:

A hen that had been regularly laying eggs in a Boston back garden played a dirty trick in the days of egg rationings - by having a sex change.

It was owned by a Boston resident, who didn’t want to be named, but said the bird ceased to lay eggs, had grown a ‘comb’ and started harrassing the other hens.

But according to Kirton poultry instructor Charles Chaplin, a partical sex change in chickens was ‘perfectly possible’, although uncommon. He said: “It is really a freak.”

A Wigtoft soldier serving in India spoke of how he had the privelege to be a guest for the night at the palace of His Highness the Maharajah of Mysore, of the the world’s richest men.

Singlaman Walter Stephenson was part of a troop invited to stay at the palace, describing their stay as like something out of Arabian Nights, with diamond-clad elephants and a ropyal zoo - complete with an iced polar bear enclosure.

http://www.bostonstandard.co.uk/news/features/nostalgia/talking-rook-and-sex-change-chicken-bizarre-birds-from-our-archives-1-5450473

'Bird Man' of Newbury Street Feeds Sparrows During Blizzard

Paul Magla has been caring for the flock for years.

By Kimberly Ashton

While Bostonians were dipping into the groceries they stocked up in advance of Fridays blizzard, other Back Bay denizens knew to head to Paul Magla for a bite during the storm. 

“I whistle and they come,” Magla told WBZ-TV of the flock of sparrows he's been tending to for the past 10 years. On Saturday morning, he found them waiting for him on his balcony.

"Because I’ve been doing it for years, so I figure even when it snows I'd come out and do it," he said. 

With their food covered in snow, they headed for Magla's place for some whole-wheat bread, and maybe some warmth.  

“Usually they don’t sit on [my] hand as much, but because it’s cold, they are,” Magla said. See the video here. 

http://backbay.patch.com/articles/bird-man-of-newbury-street-feeds-sparrows-during-blizzard