Mysterious Deaths of Dozens of Seagulls on Beaches

By Staff Reporter

Mar 15, 2020 10:22 PM EDT

Dozens of seagulls have been dropping like flies on beaches in Horowhenua. Along the stretch of kilometers of the Horowhenua sand beaches, they are dying. People have seen the helpless birds flop, stagger and struggle to fly in vain. They become paralyzed, drop on the sand and die.

This strange phenomenon have been seen in the Kuku and Waikawa beaches since Friday, on March 6, 2020. Beverley Dowling, a Manakau woman, saw a post on Facebook on the mysterious seagull deaths, and rushed quickly to the beach to try to rescue and save the black-backed seagulls which are native to the area. She saw the extent of the problem as she was walking along the beach.

Dowling described what was happening to the seagulls as like being "drugged." She reported that they could not move and are literally dying in front of her eyes. She would have wanted to save some of the birds, but it became quickly apparent to her that they were beyond help. They were in the throes of death, and it was happening very, very fast.

Furthermore, Dowling described how she watched the birds as they appeared to be apparently healthy one moment, then suddenly get paralyzed, and then die, all within 10 minutes. The woman tried counting the helpless birds, but she soon gave up because the numbers were so overwhelming. She described the scene as "quite horrific."

Read on

More than 600 vultures found dead in Guinea-Bissau

02/03/2020

Hundreds of vultures have been found dead in Guinea-Bissau over the past 10 days, according to the Vulture Conservation Foundation (VCF).

As of 28 February, the known death toll was placed at 648 – and this figure continues to rise in what represents a massive blow to the country's vulture populations.

Last week, an incident was reported in the eastern province of Bafatá, which was initially thought to have caused around 200 vulture deaths. However, the death toll subsequently increased substantially. Poisoning was initially thought to be the cause, given that this has become a frequent occurrence across Africa and is now recognised as posing the biggest threat to vultures around the continent.

André Botha, the Endangered Wildlife Trust Africa's Vultures for Africa Programme manager, said: "In recent years, we have unfortunately faced several incidents where hundreds of vultures died around a poisoned carcass, usually due to human-wildlife conflict with predators, we first thought this was such a case."

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Cause of mass bird deaths revealed

09/03/2019

Some 56 Mallards and a Canada Goose died in a park in Calgary, Canada, due to starvation and exposure. Alberta Environment and Parks confirmed the reason behind the grim scenes, which were discovered during the last week of February in Elliston Park. A few carcasses were discovered initially by Heather and Wayne Clarke, with more and more dead birds being found in the following days. This sparked an investigation with the outcome ruling that limited foraging opportunities drove the mass deaths.

Alberta Environment and Parks and the Canadian Wildlife Health Co-operative at the University of Calgary investigated the incident at the stormwater pond, and in a statement said: "[We] have determined that the ducks suffered from starvation and exposure, which was the likely cause that led to the mortality of 56 Mallards and one Canada Goose. Some additional tests are underway to rule out other causes of death."

Due to extremely cold temperatures, birds that spend the winter as far north as Calgary can face a particularly tough time – particularly wildfowl, which depend on open water. It's thought that particularly harsh conditions sparked the sudden death of such a large number of birds.

When Mr and Mrs Clarke first came across the load of dead animals there were only a handful of bodies, but open further visits to the pond during the same week many more appeared. Wayne Clarke said: "We couldn't believe it … after a week, 50 birds, scattered around – unbelievable. I've been hiking around this lake here for 17 years and I've never seen it like this."

Brett Boukall, Senior Wildlife Biologist at Alberta Environment and Parks, added: "When we see this overcrowding, the birds might not be able to feed effectively, they might not be able to protect themselves from the elements. It's possible that if one of them is carrying a disease, it can spread more quickly when they’re in a tighter group in a smaller area."

Source

Hailstorm kills and injures thousands of falcons

14/03/2019

A violent hailstorm in the South African province of KwaZulu-Natal has killed and injured almost 2,000 falcons.

The vast majority of the birds involved were Amur Falcons, although smaller numbers of Red-footed Falcons and Lesser Kestrels, which roost among the flocks of Amurs, were also injured. The birds roost communally in large numbers, meaning freak weather incidents such as that on Saturday 9 March can potentially be devastating to wintering populations.

The event unfolded in the town of Mooi River, situated inland some 140 km north-west of Durban, late evening on Saturday, where large numbers of falcons roost during the winter months. Fortunately, volunteers and members of the public were on hand to transfer hundreds of the injured birds to the FreeMe Wildlife Rehabilitation KZN branch in nearby Howick throughout the early hours of Sunday morning, where urgent treatment began.

In total, 1,090 falcons were treated during 18 hours of constant effort by the team throughout Sunday, with this thought to be the largest single-species rescue ever made in South Africa. Following assessment and treatment, the first 400 falcons were ringed and released back into the wild on Monday, with this figure climbing 970 by the end of Wednesday.

However, it was not all good news. Unfortunately, around 70 of the falcons admitted to the clinic died, while no fewer than 713 corpses were recovered from beneath the roosting tree in Mooi River on Sunday. The deceased birds have been donated to the Durban Natural History Museum, University of KwaZulu Natal and South African National Biodiversity Institute (SANBI) for DNA, isotope analysis, gene pool analysis, further research and taxidermy.

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Mystery as 20,000 dead or dying birds showing signs of starvation wash up in the Netherlands

The fish-eating guillemots have been washing up on beaches in the Netherlands

However the sudden bird deaths have not been reported in Belgium or Germany

Scientists are planning a mass autopsy in an effort to shed light on the mystery 

By AFP

PUBLISHED: 15:20, 6 February 2019 | UPDATED: 15:46, 6 February 2019

Dutch scientists have been left baffled after 20,000 dead or dying seabirds washed up on North Sea beaches in a phenomenon not seen for decades.

The fish-eating guillemots have been washing up between the northern Wadden Islands and southwestern Zeeland - all showing symptoms of severe starvation, a marine biologist said.

However the bird deaths are confined only to Dutch shores, with nothing reported in Belgium or Germany. 

Scientists are now planning a mass autopsy of hundreds of dead birds next week, hoping to shed more light on the mystery. 

'What's killing them is the million-dollar question,' Mardik Leopold, a maritime researcher for Wageningen University, told AFP.

'And we still don't know what the answer is. It's an alarming situation,' he added.

'The last time we saw high mortality rates like this was in the 1980s and 1990s.' 

High winds and stormy winter seas also could affect the birds' feeding patterns on herring and sprat as they become too fatigued to eat, Leopold said.

'But again, why are the deaths only localised to the Netherlands? Surely we're not the only place experiencing winter weather?' said Leopold.

Dutch media have raised the question of whether the deaths may be linked to a recent container spill, littering the Dutch and German coast lines with debris, including plastic toys, polystyrene, shoes and at least one bag with a dangerous powder identified by authorities as 'organic peroxide.'

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More dead pelicans, seagulls wash up in North Myrtle Beach and officials don’t know why

BY DAVID WETZEL

DECEMBER 16, 2018 01:44 PM,

UPDATED DECEMBER 17, 2018 03:40 PM

More dead birds were found on the beach in North Myrtle Beach on Sunday, and local and state officials are still trying to determine the cause.

There’s also a discrepancy over just how many dead birds were found Saturday, when estimates ranged from several to “dozens” or even “hundreds.”

“The bottom line is that birds perished and were found on our beach, and as of this writing we do not know why,” North Myrtle Beach officials said via email Sunday morning.

A day after North Myrtle Beach officials refuted social media postings indicating there were “dozens” or even “hundreds” of dead birds found on the beach, the city said the South Carolina Department of Natural Resources reported finding 30 on Saturday. North Myrtle Beach also noted that its beach patrol had found 10 more birds Sunday — a pelican that was barely alive and seagulls that had died.

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Dead and dying birds rain down in unexplained occurrence in Delta

The remains of 42 European starlings have been collected and sent to a lab in nearby Abbotsford in hopes of determining why they died.

THE CANADIAN PRESS

Updated: September 21, 2018

A B.C. man who witnessed dozens of birds falling from the sky in Delta says he was horrified by the sight.

“I called it birdageddon. It was really, really creepy,” Kevin Beech said Friday.

The self-described animal lover was driving with a friend just off a busy highway in the community of Tsawwassen on Sept. 14 when the birds started hitting the ground around his vehicle.

“They literally dove face-first into the pavement, it was brutal,” said Beech.

Environment Canada wildlife biologist Laurie Wilson confirmed the remains of 42 European starlings have been collected.

“It’s unusual to have this many birds found dead at the same time in the same place,” she said.

The remains of the birds have been sent to the B.C. Ministry of Agriculture’s animal health lab in nearby Abbotsford. Wilson said preliminary results could be available by the middle of next week, if additional tests are not required.

A network of organizations including the Canadian Wildlife Service and officials with the provincial ministries of Environment and Forests are investigating.

The sight of birds plummeting to earth is not unknown, said Wilson.

“You’d be surprised at how often people call and say they’ve seen birds falling dead out of the sky. It does happen. People report it. I haven’t seen it, but people report it.”

Beech, however, is still rattled by what he saw, comparing it to a scene from an Alfred Hitchcock film.

“It was horrible,” he said.

“Like Alfred Hitchcock creepy.”

Source  

UPDATE

Mystery solved for dozens of birds plummeting to death from the sky in B.C.

THE CANADIAN PRESS

Updated: September 26, 2018

VANCOUVER — A natural occurrence is behind the unusual deaths of about 40 starlings that plummeted to the ground in Delta, B.C., earlier this month.

When Vancouver resident Kevin Beech witnessed the birds falling from the sky, he called it “birdageddon,” saying it was really creepy.

But a statement from Environment and Climate Change Canada’s Wildlife Service says the flock of birds was being chased by a much larger bird just before the starlings hit the ground.

The service says the cloud of birds swooped toward the ground and then pulled back up but the tail end of the swarm didn’t and about 200 birds hit the ground, killing 42 starlings on impact.

A veterinarian pathologist with the B.C. Ministry of Agriculture conducted a necropsy and found the cause of death was a chest injury and there was no evidence of underlying infectious disease or intoxication.

The service says European starlings can form very large flocks and they execute amazing swooping and whirling patterns, called a murmuration, to avoid a predatory bird.

Source  

More than 60 baby seagulls found dead, injured in South Loop ‘bird chaos’

06/18/2018, 07:25pm

About 40 dead and 25 injured baby seagulls were found and rescued from South Jefferson Street on Sunday in what seems to be the result of attacks between seagulls.

The Chicago Birds Collision Monitors, which works under the Chicago Audubon Society, received a phone call through its hotline about 2 p.m. When volunteer Chava Sonnier arrived at the scene on her way home, expecting to pick up just one or a few birds, she was “totally shocked.”

“I’ve personally never seen anything of this large a scale before,” she said. “It was truly bird chaos.”

Sonnier rescued about 20 injured seagulls from a sea of eggs, birds and feathers. It was “heartbreaking,” she said, to see surviving birds curled up near their dead siblings or trying to remain with family members.

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Thousands of dead blue penguins thought to have washed up on northern beaches

Little Blue Penguins deaths increase

AOTEAROA SCIENCE AGENCY

Large numbers of dead blue penguins have been washed up on northern east coast beaches this summer, with the total number thought to be in the thousands.

The number of dead birds was unusual but not unprecedented, Department of Conservation penguin expert Graeme Taylor said. It was about a one-in-20-year event, with the last similar year being 1998.

Reports of dead penguins had been coming in from east coast beaches from Bay of Plenty north since the start of the year.

The number of dead little blue penguins washing up on northern beaches is much higher than usual, with estimates thousands of the dead birds have been found.

A clearer idea of the number of dead penguins found would not be known until the Birds New Zealand Beach Patrol Scheme put out its 2018 report, but the number would have to be in the thousands, Taylor said.

"I've heard people saying they've picked up 20 or 30 on a single small beach somewhere."

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Hundreds of birds fall out of the sky in Utah

POSTED 10:19 AM, JANUARY 31, 2018, BY TRIBUNE MEDIA WIRE

DRAPER, Utah –Residents in Draper, Utah are confused after more than 200 birds fell from the sky onto the street Monday.

“It’s one of the rarest things I’ve ever heard of,” Sergeant Chad Carpenter with the Draper City Police Department, told KSTU.

“As I was driving, these birds were just falling out of the sky,” said Draper resident Lacey Brown.

“They were all on the ground right around here and on the roadway,” Brown said, “They were just falling out of the sky like leaves,” she added.

But they weren’t leaves, they were hundreds of small birds called starlings.

Read on and see video 

Mystery of black-billed gull deaths: What's killing this endangered bird?

27 Jan, 2018 7:30am

NZ Herald

Dead gulls found near Grovers Island, in the Clutha River near Roxburgh in Central Otago, will be tested to establish their cause of death.

Mykayla Robert, of Roxburgh, found the gulls while she was walking last weekend.

Posting on Facebook, Miss Robert commented that she was not sure how they died.

"I found at least 30-40 dead seagulls on that little island, mainly on the Clutha River side," Robert said.

Robert took pictures of the dead gulls.

"As you can see, there was one or two seagulls every metre right along the shore line," she said.

Department of Conservation (Doc) senior ranger, biodiversity, for Central Otago John Keene said a Doc ranger investigated the site that day and estimated up to 40 black-billed gulls were dead.

The ranger did not see any obvious signs on the carcasses of damage from animal predators, Mr Keene said.

The area was known for being a breeding colony site for black-billed gulls, an endangered species.

This was the second time mysterious deaths at the colony had been discovered, he said.

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Nearly 100 sea birds found dead on Albany beaches

Friday, 20 October 2017 3:44AM

More than 80 sea birds have washed up dead on Albany beaches, according to the Conservation Council of WA.

The flesh-footed shearwaters were found washed up dead on Goode and Fisheries Beech on the western side of King George Sound, south of Albany.

Conservation Council of WA Nic Dunlop said the kills may be caused by purse-seine fishing.

“The timing of this Shearwater kill is unusually early, but in every other respect fitted the now familiar pattern of these seabirds being drowned in the purse-seine nets used by the Albany-based South Coast Purse-seine Fishery,” Dr Dunlop said.

“The Flesh-footed Shearwater is a species that has recently shown a dramatic decline in all three of its populations. The species is known to be particularly susceptible as bycatch in a variety of commercial fisheries, to the ingestion of plastics, and to changes in marine climate.

Losing another eighty adult shearwaters from the local breeding population - in addition to around seventy earlier in the year - is a serious conservation issue.

“CCWA has attempted to work cooperatively with the Department of Fisheries to eliminate this problem from the fishery for more than a decade. There was an early reduction in bycatch from thousands to hundreds of individuals but no further progress since then.”

But WA Fishing Industry Council CEO John Harrison has denied that activities by the Albany-based South Coast Purse-seine Fishery are connected to the bird's deaths.

"The recent loss of shearwaters in the Albany region is concerning but WAFIC (based on advice from fishers) does not believe it is linked to purse seine fishing," Mr Harrison says.

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Poisoned elephant carcass kills 94 critically endangered vultures in Zimbabwe

4 Jul 2017

By Obaka Torto and Jude Fuhnwi

Ninety four critically endangered White Backed vultures have been reported dead after feeding on a poisoned elephant carcass recently in Zimbabwe. The incident occurred in Gonarezhou, a small locality near the town of Chiqualaquala, an area which has become a hub for illegal wildlife trade along the country’s border with Mozambique.

It is unclear how the elephants were poisoned, but a wildlife poisoning and mortality report from Frankfurt Zoological Society experts indicated that the elephant was killed by a watermelon laced with what is suspected to be Temik, a carbamate pesticide. Experts are analyzing samples in a laboratory to determine the poison.

“The tusks of the elephant were removed, so not sure whether the cause is accidental, secondary poisoning or deliberate lacing of carcass to cause vulture deaths,” according to the report.

Conservationists working at the Gonarezhou National Park have said the motive for poisoning is likely to be ivory as only the elephant’s tusks were missing at the time the carcass was discovered, whereas all body parts of the vultures were intact. However, vultures are also deliberately poisoned by elephant poachers to avoid detection by wildlife authorities because of vulture circling behaviour and could perhaps be an additional motivation to poison vultures.

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Mystery shrouds death of 37 birds near Gondia

Vijay Pinjarkar | TNN | May 22, 2017, 03.20 AM ISTRepresentative image

NAGPUR: Death of 37 birds in Sakhri Ghat in Gondia has been shrouded in mystery with experts debating the birds dying of water or food poisoning.

The area where the birds were found dead falls between Khamtalao and Shenda in both territorial and FDCM forest areas and is 30km from Gondia.

The dead birds were first noticed on May 19, by Anil Kumar Nair, project coordinator with Wildlife Trust of India (WTI), Goregaon.

Nair suspects the birds allegedly died after inhaling carbon monoxide due to sudden combustion following forest fires perhaps ignited for tendu patta.

"We found the dead birds in 500 metre radius. It is not the case of water poisoning as being feared. Other animals including birds and herbivores quenched their thirst at a waterhole near the same spot and were absolutely normal," said Nair.

The list of dead birds included 9 white bellied drongo, 2 rufous treepie, 9 black-naped monarch, 2 greater racket tail drongo, 2 white-throated kingfisher, 6 Indian scops owls, and 1 each common hawk cuckoo, jungle babbler, oriental magpie robin, ashy drongo, shama, red-vented bulbul, and jungle owlet.


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Thousands of snow geese die in Montana after landing on contaminated water

Huge flock of migratory birds landed on acidic waters of an open pit mine where employees attempted to scare them off

Associated Press

Wednesday 7 December 2016 01.28 GMT 

Several thousand snow geese have died after a snowstorm forced large flocks to take refuge in the acidic, metal-laden waters of an old open pit mine in Montana.

Mark Thompson, environmental affairs manager for mine company Montana Resources, said witnesses described the pit as like “700 acres of white birds” on 28 November. 

Along with Atlantic Richfield, Montana Resources is responsible for Berkeley Pit in Butte.

Since 28 November, employees of MR and Arco had used spotlights, noise makers and other efforts to scare or “haze” the birds off the water and prevent others from landing.

The companies estimated that more than 90% of the birds had been chased off by 29 November, Thompson said.

Workers received some advance notice about the incoming flock from an off-duty Montana Resources employee about 25 miles away, who called to report there were about 25,000 geese in the air in Anaconda, Thompson said.

“I can’t underscore enough how many birds were in the Butte area that night,” Thompson said. “Numbers beyond anything we’ve ever experienced in our 21 years of monitoring by several orders of magnitude.”

The employees worked hard to save the birds, he said. 

Typically, Butte sees between 2,000 and 5,000 birds all year, including spring and water migration, Thompson said.

The estimated death toll is based on drone and aircraft flights over the pit, which holds about 45bn gallons (175bn litres) of water.

Continued