Dozens Of Dying Birds Rain From The Sky Over Boston

[senona]

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service are assisting a probe into what killed dozens of grackles and a cat earlier this week in Dorchester.

Dozens of birds rained down from the sky over the Boston neighborhood of Dorchester on Thursday morning.

All of the birds ― either 47 or 48, depending on the report ― were grackles, a type of songbird. Thirty-three ultimately died, The Boston Herald reported.

“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,” Lt. Alan Borgal of the Animal Rescue League of Boston told New England Cable News.

“The weaker ones were just falling right out the sky.”


Local resident Shelora Levaud told CBS Boston that it seemed as if the birds were paralyzed on one side.

“I tried to move them a little bit, and it just seemed like they were on one side, and you put them on their feet and they just fell,” she said.


And the birds weren’t the only victims. Willien Pugh found his beloved cat, Sally B, dying at his doorstep at around 8:30 that morning. NECN reports that a second cat in the area also died suddenly, while a third was “affected.”


Investigators are trying to determine whether the deaths were the result of disease, poison or some other cause.

Source



Wonder if any pesticide had been sprayed in that area just before that happened?
Odd for it to effect 2 cats as well as the birds.

Scott Johnston, U.S. Fish and Wildlife’s branch chief for populations of migratory birds, told the Herald mass “die-offs” are not unheard of and said some of the 33 dead grackles collected on Bakersfield Street on Thursday will be sent to the department’s state-of-the-art lab in Ashland, Ore., in the hopes of pinpointing why they died.

“I have seen local deaths like this where starlings or many other birds have gotten into a field that was recently sprayed,” Johnston said, “or you could have a die-off from an infection that moves through a flock very quickly.”

Animal Rescue League of Boston law enforcement director Lt. Alan Borgal said authorities have recovered 48 sick or dead grackles and one dead cat.

Linky


Hopefully they will find out what caused this so they can prevent it from happening again, if it was due to something being sprayed.
Hate that a family pet was killed too.