
Birds 'falling out of the sky' in mass die-off in south-western US - orf
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/sep/16/birds-falling-out-of-the-sky-in-mass-die-off-in-south-western-us-aoe
======
rhacker
It was the massive surge of cold air that spewed into Colorado last week. The
same surge that caused the massive winds in CA / OR / WA to churn up small
fires.

Those birds left CO for the South - probably don't normally get that in the
middle of summer.

There's very little smoke in NM. Some but not enough to kill the birds or
cause them to fly a billion miles. That was the summer cold snap that did it.

This is a classic case of not enough Ornithological Meteorologists or
Meteorological Ornithologists. Or maybe because the Ornithological convention
and Meteorological convention (which are normally hosted in the same hotel in
September) were both cancelled this year due to Covid-19. (this last paragraph
was a failed attempt at humor)

~~~
andy_ppp
I’d need to see evidence of this, there’s a lot of propaganda about climate
change causing things “on both sides” so I would like to see a reference to
this effect before I believe it!

~~~
ghego1
> evidence

The problem with climate change is precisely this.

In order to convince everyone we need evidence. However evidence, strictly and
scientifically speaking, can only be produced once a phenomenon is fully
observed, understood, and reproducible.

In the case of climate change that means waiting for the changes to fully
happen, which would be too late if climate change is indeed real.

So you are left with a choice: trust the partial data we have and conclude
that climate change is happening, or deny it and hope it never materializes.
The third option would be to consciously prefer to wait for climate change to
fully materialize and only then take action, but this to me sounds a bit
suicidal.

~~~
Balgair
I mean, the sky was orange and the sun never came out. The ice just keeps
melting when it shouldn't. The hurricanes are getting worse. The years just
get hotter.

It's _happening_ , present tense. The data is in, you can see it with your own
eyes. It's clear as day (pun intended).

~~~
ghthor
Yep, that's great. It's also happened many times in the past when no
documented industrial civilization existed.

There is a long term correlation with solar activity(CME's,Sunspots,Solar
flares) that can attest for large climatic swings of the past.

The science is not clear as day, and if you stopped searching for the truth of
the matter you've stopped do science.

~~~
XMPPwocky
> There is a long term correlation with solar activity(CME's,Sunspots,Solar
> flares) that can attest for large climatic swings of the past.

Based on 2020's level of solar activity, would you expect it to be hotter or
colder than it actually is?

Because from what I've seen, you'd expect it to be colder.

Which means something else is causing the temperature rise.

So why bring up solar activity at all?

------
bryan0
The first sentence of this article describes the die-off as "inexplicable",
but the sub-title gives a couple explanations including the massive fires and
resulting smoke which is covering the western US. Watching the animals outside
my house, I wonder how this smoke must be effecting them, but evolution must
have led them out of wildfire conditions in the past.

~~~
throwaway5752
I commented somewhere else here with a link to a researcher posting about
findings. The link is to a twitter thread, and several posts down they say, _"
The birds seem to be in relatively good condition, except that they are
extremely emaciated. They have no fat reserves and barely any muscle mass.
Almost as if they have been flying until they just couldn’t fly anymore."_

~~~
btilly
Almost like...their reflex is to fly until they are out of the smoke. Which is
adaptive when dealing with small fires, and lethal when they are unable to fly
far enough to get out of the smoke.

~~~
throwaway5752
I'd be happy to read any reputable paper, article, or discussion thread you
can find about it. Seems like something that would be falsifiable and has been
researched already, so not worth debating about in the hypothetical.

~~~
btilly
I am not a researcher, but [https://www.audubon.org/news/how-wildfires-affect-
birds](https://www.audubon.org/news/how-wildfires-affect-birds) would seem to
be a reputable source. It was written in 2017, but is relevant to the current
situation.

Multiple passages in it are relevant to this issue. Birds do try to fly away
from fire. We have evidence that smoke inhalation is worse for birds than
mammals (which would mean that birds would need to flee smoke, and not just
the flames). And the possibility of birds dying of exhaustion from trying to
fly away was already a concern to wildlife conservationists.

None of which is proof. But it is all suggestive that I'm making a reasonable
guess as to why they are dying.

~~~
throwaway5752
Not a researcher in this area, either. And no need to be, we are probably able
to evaluate research. Great article. I will say that some sources
([https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/15/us/dead-birds-new-
mexico-...](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/15/us/dead-birds-new-mexico-
colorado.html)) indicate that migratory bird die off observations started in
mid-Aug, which would not jibe with the fire timelines
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/August_Complex_fire#Timeline](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/August_Complex_fire#Timeline)).
Also, the linked article submission talks about New Mexico, Texas, and even
Nebraska which are hundreds of miles from the fires and generally outside of
areas of NWS smoke forecast concern
([https://www.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/index.html?id=2ff16...](https://www.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/index.html?id=2ff1677111ae4018ac705fcce7c3312f))

------
DeonPenny
The sky was red a few days ago. I'm guessing its that. I don't know. I'm not
100% sure, but that was the one thing out of the normal

~~~
HenryBemis
Is the smoke 'clean', meaning is it just plantation that is being consumed by
fire or there is also a large percentage of toxic smoke into the air?

Has there been significant number of homes/cars/factories (I am thinking
things that upon being burnt would release a chemical/toxic cloud)(thinking
the difference of burning 100kg of wood Vs burning 100kg of laptops and how
different the smoke would be in damaging health)

~~~
pjc50
Wood smoke itself is surprisingly toxic; all sorts of nasty combustion
products.

~~~
bdamm
True, but our definition of toxic has changed. Humans have been living with
wood smoke for millennia, it may not be great for you but it isn't very new in
terms of evolutionary presence. Smoke from burning industrial chemicals is a
newer thing, and certainly some of these industrial toxins can kill or injure
you far more quickly than wood smoke. So a warehouse full of laptops burning
(and probably painted with lead) is something I'd want to take extra
precautions to avoid vs wildfire smoke.

~~~
HenryBemis
Thank you for that comment.

My post above got downvoted (and I don't care) but it's all about the point I
was trying to make and it was clearly misunderstood.

Btw my father is a retired fireman and the nomenclature ("chemical", "toxic")
is his. Every time there is a fire in the news we talk about it and he gives
me his input on the impact. And he has dealt with many types of fires
(forests, offices, chemical factories, living blocks, etc.)

The destruction in nature is unfortunate and nobody wants it. But the impact
from the smoke (and wait until all that crap in the air goes over you city,
and then wait for it to rain all that toxic crap will end up on your parks and
streets and schools).. and then you will start driving your car and part of
the "dust" that will get back into your breathable air will be.. you guessed
it.. what has been burning for so many days.

Thus the difference between burnt trees Vs burnt homes/factories/chemicals
(100kg wood vs 100kg laptops as an extreme example). Wood - you cough, laptops
you get lung cancer.

The crap that is in the smoke, sooner or later, here or there, will make come
back down, and THAT matters.

~~~
oarsinsync
> Wood - you cough

> Emissions from wood smoke, discussed below, can cause coughing, wheezing,
> asthma attacks, heart attacks, lung cancer, and premature death, among other
> health effects.

[https://www.lung.org/clean-air/at-home/indoor-air-
pollutants...](https://www.lung.org/clean-air/at-home/indoor-air-
pollutants/residential-wood-burning)

------
oramit
How serendipitous. I was just chatting with my partner and we heard birds
chirping outside our house.

I realized that I had not heard them for a couple weeks now and guessed it had
to do with the awful smoke conditions here in Portland. The smoke is still bad
but it is noticeably less apocalyptic this morning. I thought birds would flee
bad smoke like this but maybe they were just holed up in their nests waiting
for things to improve, same as us?

~~~
spfzero
Noticed the same thing today, birds are back in our yard, here in So Cal.

------
aurizon
From the initial posting, it seems these birds avoided the smoke. Miners used
to use canaries in coal mines to detect gas. Birds are exquisitely sensitive
to combustion fumes. Their instinct is to get far away. It appears they fled
to an insect free desert area and kept pushing on until they literally
exhausted their fat reserves. The only way I can think to help them is to
scatter some meal worms on the ground in the hopes that you will save a few.
It will have to done on a wide area = probably not practical. The only long
term solution is to change forest management to allow the understory of
brush/grass/small trees to burn every 2-3 years via intentional fires. In
addition substantial clear zones around all homes in addition to stripes of
clear zones every 1/2 mile as fire breaks. These highly packed stand of trees
with thick understories burn to the ground, kill all trees and sterilize the
soil of seeds so nothing grows for a while until wind scatters in new seeds.
California has done this to itself, with the help of The Sierra Club (who
lobbied against preventive burns because the home owners loved the trees and
bushes where they lived) You reap what you sow. Changes MUST come ASAP

------
pjc50
I've heard smoke inhalation cited as a possible cause for this, but it looks
too early for a definitive explanation.

~~~
falcolas
The smoke is _really bad_ in the west.

[https://fire.airnow.gov/](https://fire.airnow.gov/)

~~~
LargoLasskhyfv
Looking at it, and the extent I begin to wonder about the global implications
of that. Probably doesn't rise as high as a volcanic eruption or nuclear
mushroom, but this is _massive_.

~~~
seba_dos1
Combine that with similar massive fires in Australia happening on the opposite
season and the fact that this is only going to get worse with time.

------
gdubs
I was walking the trash bins down our long drive to the road yesterday in a
soup of wildfire smoke and fog when it occurred to me — we sure have a
compartmentalized way of looking at the issues plaguing the world right now.

Part of that is the sheer complexity of our contemporary world. There are few
polymaths — most are specialists. It feels like we’re sorely lacking people
who see across many fields to synthesize everything that’s happening.

But it feels pretty clear that the system is on the fritz, has been for a
while, and we’re incredibly stupid to not take bold action to fix it. Instead,
we’re still having arguments about whether people are the cause. Of. Course.
We. Are.

~~~
mhb
_we’re still having arguments about whether people are the cause. Of. Course.
We. Are._

You seem to discount the anthropocentric argument (as it should be) and then
promptly jump right in to it. Why does it matter what the cause is?

~~~
Retric
It’s generally more difficult to actually fix something without knowing the
cause.

~~~
notabee
It's even more difficult when the cause has been known for decades but doesn't
jive with people's means of income or religious views and is thus roundly
ignored or debated in bad faith.

------
skeptronus
They have started an iNaturalist project.[1] If you find any dead bird in the
affected areas you can submit the pictures of it to the project database. It
will help in identification and understanding the scale of impact.

[1]: [https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/southwest-avian-
mortali...](https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/southwest-avian-mortality-
project)

------
aaron695
I feel like this story gets repeated every few years on HN.

Checking one was 10 year ago.

I think it's funny people think you can have a collective oral history that's
factual.

Yet even with computers and internet we get the apocalyptical death cult going
on and on about the end of the world and the mysticism.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2079371](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2079371)

"Dead Bird Panic", I like that comment.

~~~
TomSwirly
"Everything is fine. This is all normal."

[https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/19/science/bird-
populations-...](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/19/science/bird-populations-
america-canada.html)

~~~
aaron695
> "Everything is fine. This is all normal."

Thanks. I knew it was a repetitive moral panic.

Definitely every few years in western media we get a cycle of hysteria. Over
the world I'd say yearly about the "birds falling dead from the sky" as we are
all smitten :)

You can spell it out, but it's all repeated.

~~~
aaron695
Oh, here's a big list, with links to articles from all over the world.

But it does talk about how it might be 5G, which fit's pretty well with the
comments here.

[https://fendaux.com/why-are-dead-birds-falling-from-the-
sky/](https://fendaux.com/why-are-dead-birds-falling-from-the-sky/)

------
m3kw9
Anything to do with all the smoke and CO2 constantly streaming up there?

------
cryptica
>> ... climate crisis cited as possible causes for the deaths of thousands of
migrating species heading south for the winter

Yes it was because of global cooling... The insufficient amount of carbon
dioxide in the atmosphere is causing the well documented 'icebox effect' to
occur.

We need to get our coal power plants running at full steam in order to
counteract the cooling.

------
Havoc
Bunch of elephants were dropping the other day in Namibia too. Nature isn't
coping...

~~~
guerrilla
A source for curious people:
[https://talkinghumanities.blogs.sas.ac.uk/2020/09/10/why-
are...](https://talkinghumanities.blogs.sas.ac.uk/2020/09/10/why-are-
elephants-dying-in-zimbabwe-and-botswana/)

------
tashoecraft
Whose traveling back in time out there? Thought the portal was only in Germany

~~~
Izkata
Seems to be one of those things just weird enough to get used in fiction
regularly as shorthand for "something is _really_ wrong" \- it was part of the
trailers for Jericho [0] and a plot point over the course of FlashForward [1].

[0]
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jericho_(2006_TV_series)](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jericho_\(2006_TV_series\))

[1]
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/FlashForward](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/FlashForward)

~~~
throwanem
Birds are significantly more susceptible to acute radiation injury than humans
(cf.
[https://www.nature.com/articles/srep16594](https://www.nature.com/articles/srep16594)
\- not directly on point, but the dose rate relationships can be trivially
compared with those widely documented for humans, e.g. at
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acute_radiation_syndrome#Dose_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acute_radiation_syndrome#Dose_effects)).
I suspect that's where the association originates, and the use of the trope
fits in especially well with _Jericho_ 's plot, which opens with a nuclear
war.

------
havelhovel
I have been told on this forum that the men and women working in wildlife
conservation are in it for vanity or for self gratification. Relatedly, I have
been told on this forum that there is nothing that regular folks can do about
climate change.

But then events like this happen, and no one reflects on how fatally
pessimistic this community can be. Are we ourselves not capable of forecasting
the effect of a burning state on migration patterns? Are we as a society not
blessed with enough resources to intervene? If we could all agree to do
something—no matter how trivial—to minimize the destruction, instead of doing
nothing and attacking the ideas of those who do anything, maybe the aggregate
effect would be that events like this are avoided.

If you’re in this fight, please let me know how else I can help. I’m going to
check on my bird feeders in the meantime.

~~~
jlengrand
So much this. The events from the past years have already been difficult to
digest. But every time I come and read comments, I'm even more depressed,
anxious. "no matter if you don't drive, or stop meat; it won't be enough".
"nice that you're stopping commuting, but that won't suffice". "offsetting by
planting trees is not good enough compared to net zero". Or worse, dismissive
like "it only helps with your own self-guilt".

This usually leaves me so depressed.

Yes, I realize all those actions won't suffice, even if we all agree to apply
them starting tomorrow. And yes, we need both local and global impact for
things to move forward. But I also believe that if everyone starts doing their
part : buying less, reducing meat, whatever, it will get discussed more and
more and become a concrete part of society much faster.

Guessing OP and I will get downvoted though, which is fine. HN has a fair
share of the brightest minds in Tech and related, sometimes I miss a bunch of
less pragmatic positivity.

~~~
havelhovel
I took an elective wildlife conservation class while earning my Master's. I
had no right to be there, because I was surrounded by the brightest, most
pragmatic minds I had ever met. The work that my classmates had done to stop
destruction, or to sustain populations through novel solutions, was awe
inspiring. We don't see it here, and there's an obvious reason for why that
might be, but there are amazing people out there who are making the world a
better place than it would otherwise be. The least I can do is not just give
up. Thank you for doing your part. I really appreciate it.

~~~
jlengrand
My use of pragmatic was really not meant to be dismissive. My English is not
always as good as I'd like it to be :).

Every time there is a discussion about climate change, there are comments in
the lines of "we are in danger, Earth is not". That's entirely correct, but it
doesn't help much :).

Thanks for the kind words, you are definitely right, many people are working
in the right direction. We need to listen to them more.

------
indigochill
On the topic of seeing across many fields, it's occurred to me there is a
common theme across the crises of 2020 (particularly as seen through the lens
of the US): "I can't breathe".

Covid: check

George Floyd's murder which sparked worldwide protests: check

Smoke covering half the US: check

Not that I'm a polymath or have any answers. My approach to these problems is
to leave the fate of the world to those who hold the power and just do my best
to locally mitigate the damage.

~~~
paulmd
the internal instability within western nations has reached the point that our
national psyche has regressed to the lower levels of maslow's hierarchy

we've regressed from self-actualization and are now focused on issues of
survival

~~~
daveslash
If our ecology really is collapsing, this is going to get worse. As resources
become more and more scarce, powerful first-world countries are not going to
want to regress in their standards of living, which I speculate is going to
lead to increased global conflict.

~~~
paulmd
our inability to deal with the climate collapse is only a second-order effect,
we are completely unable to deal with _anything_ right now. If it wasn't the
climate crisis, and if it wasn't the pandemic, it would be something else. Our
political system is far too polarized and far too plagued by anti-
intellectualism, it simply can't respond to anything.

Russia and conservative media (murdoch media, etc) seeding regressive/anti-
intellectual movements has been massively successful, western society is just
completely unprepared to deal with freedom of speech being leveraged to spew
an unending firehose of bullshit, it's a "copyleft" style trojan approach of
using our own democratic values against us.

The firehose of bullshit has led to the rise of anti-intellectual movements,
an anti-intellectual president, and a party that just votes absolutely
lockstep with him no matter what he does. They don't give a shit about
absolutely anything, not fires or hurricanes or plagues, and just let all
these problems fester. It has a lot of other negative effects too of course,
but we have reached the point where we simply can't respond even to acute
crises anymore, our system has long-since lost its higher functioning in terms
of setting goals and being able to execute them (what you'd call "self-
actualization" in maslow's hierachy) and now is struggling even to maintain
basic homeostasis (the "physical needs" tier of the maslow hierarchy).

(I include Brexit, Bolsanaro, Duarte, etc in this as well - western democracy
is in _deep fucking shit_ worldwide and if we don’t get our shit together and
deal with the firehose of falsehoods we will be supplanted by more
authoritarian forms of government that don’t suffer this vulnerability because
they don’t tolerate free speech and dissent.)

It is also super depressing to know that even with everything that's gone on,
less than 5% of america has even changed its mind. Even with the plague, even
with the fires, even with civil unrest and mass arrests, even as the post
office is dismantled and we lose the ability even to get a fucking package on
time, 40% of america will go in the booth and pull the lever for more of this.
It goes beyond just "doesn't affect me, who cares", or "that's 20 years from
now me's problem", this has all affected everyone, _now_ , _today_ , and
people still want more as long as they get to own the libs. It's maddening.

~~~
dontcarethrow2
I agree with your observations except the anti-intellectual movements. Those
are grassroot, obviously allows us to believe anyone to be the boogeyman. I
really struggle with the perspective of 'The Russians are out to get us and
enslave the world(forever that is their goal) so buy our guns and install our
defense systems. Economy machine go brrrrr'.

------
RocketSyntax
Aren't mass dyings caused by viruses?

~~~
briga
In this case, the most obvious explanation is the fact that they've been
breathing in poisonous air (smoke) for weeks on end. Anecdotally, I've heard
very little bird chirping in the past few weeks while the smoke was at its
heaviest, whereas normally the birds are active all day.

------
molsson
Dead birds? Clearly, the Earth's magnetic field must be reversing!!11

[https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0298814/](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0298814/)

------
jibcage
It feels like the earth is dying. I wonder if the human population has longer
than 20 years of tolerable existence left on this planet.

~~~
Dirlewanger
To paraphrase George Carlin: The planet is fine, but the people are fucked.

~~~
padseeker
I think about that comment from Carlin ALL THE TIME in relationship to global
warming and natural disaster. Our perspective on saving the planet is very ego
and species centric. As said in Jurassic Park "Life finds a way". However that
life might not include humans.

~~~
Dirlewanger
Does that mean we should just let nature take its course, or maybe be
proactive about it and fix some of humanity's worst tendencies i.e. our
extremely wasteful society, plastic absolutely everywhere?

------
blahblah4332
So far food scarcity looks like the most plausible explanation. Someone needs
to get a massive campaign together in flyover zones to get people to scatter
food for them. Assuming appropriate feed for these species is even widely
available in those areas.

Probably too little too late in this case though... I guess we just update the
wildfire documents to include care for migratory species and hope there's a
next time

~~~
throwaway5752
I want to point out the issues of 1) commenting on areas where one doesn't
have expertise 2) not recognizing that and find credible sources of
information.

No offense, but even though you projected confidence I doubted you had any
ornithology background. Since I didn't either, I recognized my lack of
expertise and did some good faith basic research, informally speaking, to see
if I could find out what the most likely explanation was.

I found a professor at Colorado St. U. with a verified account on twitter
([https://twitter.com/Kyle__Horton](https://twitter.com/Kyle__Horton)) who had
retweeted
[https://twitter.com/salasphorus/status/1304973069056786432](https://twitter.com/salasphorus/status/1304973069056786432).
In this case the second tweet was someone with a masters in wildlife biology
research with the USFW in this area.

It turns out it is food scarcity, but among insectivorous passerines (perching
birds). Numerous amateur birdwatching sites that are easy to find note how
hard it is to get them to your feeders _since they do not eat seeds_.

Scattering food would probably be ineffective.

It also suggests that there is a problem in a lower trophic level. We've read
a lot about insect die offs. Now we seem to have a die off in migratory
insectivores. Maybe it's because of fires triggering an early migration that
is not timed with insect population cycles. Maybe it's not, I don't know. It
seems like an area to be greatly concerned about.

~~~
dang
Please don't cross into personal attack on HN. HN is only an internet forum.
If you have better information to contribute, that's wonderful, but there's no
requirement for other commenters to be specialists, or to quote specialists.
Human conversation is far broader than that, and needs to be.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

~~~
throwaway5752
I know tone is hard online, but I never intended it a personal attack for a
moment. Looking at it, I can see how it can be interpreted as condescending,
though. I meant what I said: I am not a specialist, either. However, this was
the top comment on this submission when I replied, and it was factually
incorrect. I did not spend a long time searching for the links I cited. Dang,
you understand running an online community better than I ever will, likely.
What is the right call on civility vs correctness? How could I have done
better here?

------
ed25519FUUU
“Climate crisis” is starting to become the _laziest_ explanation for why
anything unusual happens in this country. Are you telling me these birds never
did their migration above forest fires? Tell us why it’s different.

~~~
jeffbee
The way humans drive species to extinction is we push them right up to the
very edge of it, removing 99% of their habitat and forage, and then we wait
for a normal adverse event to finish the job. That these events happen from
time to time does not absolve us.

~~~
hirako2000
Howcome we let this happen? Whoever decides to remove the last few %? Just
gets away with it??

