As regular CFZ-watchers will know, for some time Corinna has been doing a column for Animals & Men and a regular segment on On The Track... particularly about out-of-place birds and rare vagrants. There seem to be more and more bird stories from all over the world hitting the news these days so, to make room for them all - and to give them all equal and worthy coverage - she has set up this new blog to cover all things feathery and Fortean.

Thursday, 5 March 2015

TWRA testing for cause of highway bird deaths

By JAY POWELL

SPRING HILL — On Monday, 60 starlings were found dead on U.S. Highway 31 near the Saturn Parkway access ramp, and the Tennessee Wildlife Resource Agency is searching for a cause.

One theory is the birds could have been run over by a vehicle, but what has TWRA officials scratching their heads was how it could have happened in such large numbers, agency spokesman Doug Markham said. TWRA officers say they have a pizza delivery truck driver who claims to have hit the birds, and is currently being investigated.

“Even if there’s a guy locally that said he thought he may have hit them, we’re still going to send the birds off for laboratory work to see if they were run over or if something odd might have happened to them,” Markham said. “So we took about half a dozen birds that were still in pretty good shape and sent them to a lab for analysis.”

Although some of the birds were a few feet off of the road, they weren’t scattered far enough to assume they couldn’t have been hit by an oncoming vehicle, especially a large truck.

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