Hundreds of birds suddenly drop from the sky [video] | Hacker News Reader

Hundreds of birds suddenly drop from the sky [video]

wesh.com

45 pointsandrewfromx33 comments

Maybe a microburst [0] of air from a developing thunderstorm? Basically, an extremely powerful downward burst of cold air. Seems to have killed birds in the past [1]. This is absolutely terrifying during takeoff/landing inside an airplane [2].

[0]: https://www.weather.gov/ama/microbursts

[1]: https://lancasteronline.com/news/local/mystery-solved-unusua...

[2]: https://youtu.be/Q3Sr2F_xxLo

The article from The Guardian quotes as the most likely cause:

"Dr Richard Broughton, an ecologist [..] said a predator could have made the birds swirl tightly and driven them towards the ground, with higher birds forcing lower ones to crash into the buildings or the ground."

Video available for Europeans here: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/feb/14/why-did-...

WOW I never thought content like this would be tagged "graphic"

It does not appear to me that the birds dropped from the sky. It seems like, for whatever reason, they flew under their own power directly into the ground and surrounding scenery.

A reddit comment I saw last week mentioned it could be just the flock/murmuration were trying to get away from a predator and flew lower, and the ones at the bottom didn't have much luck and hit the ground. Would at least make sense...

From the link:

Ornithologist and biology professor at Allegheny College in Pennsylvania, Ronald L. Mumme told Newsweek he thought a large bird was behind it.

"Based on the birds' behavior, my suspicion is that a falcon or other bird-eating raptor attacked the flock in flight, and during evasive maneuvers the flock members dove, became disoriented, and many crashed to the ground and injured themselves," he said. "I don't think any birds were having problems until they collided with the ground or buildings. It looks like most of the birds were able to fly away, but a significant number could not."

Two more experts told The Guardian they agreed with Mumme, blaming the event on "flock murmurating to avoid a predator raptor."

I read that they went between some powerlines and the flock of them caused a short between the lines that spread and arc'd through them.

Yeah, it's just a flock of birds flying down.

Geofenced, can't watch it from Europe.

For a moment, I thought the birds are geofenced at height and thus fell down, like Icarus flying too close to the sun.

Here is a youtube link which works from Europe: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2D2lrFemFig

The same problem here. Turn on VPN, works fine, i.e. from Japan.

This looks like a Boids implementation that gets the flocking behavior right but has a bug in ground collision avoidance.

Assume this is evasive behavior due to a predator or predator-analogue (i.e., a drone might also be mistaken for a predator and cause this behavior).

The middle of the flock is a bad place to be, when the flock slams into the ground at full speed.

"dammit, Bob, you had the map!"

I am not sure if those are starlings, but starlings form giant flocks called murmurations. The flocks don’t have a leader and every bird just follows the birds around it, and as a result sometimes they crash into things. I wonder if that is happening here.

It was an electric shortcut

The birds where standing on an electric cable, you can see the posts in the video, the flock because it was tightly packaged while standing on the cables it made them touch and that electrocuted a lot of birds it seems

I don't think so. The bulk of them flew right away afterwards.

That's the explanation I read when this was released the other day. The birds closer to the wire bore the brunt of the shock as it arc'd out to birds not even touching the wire. You can see where the bulk of the dead birds fall in line with the wire, and get more sparse as they're distributed outward. Then, a few of them are merely stunned, and get up to fly away.

Here's a video of what this looks like. I initially suspected the same thing.

https://vm.tiktok.com/TTPdB4GvSk/

(Skip to the end of the video for the wire collapsing under the birds' weight)

for those having issues with geofencing on the current event, here is the video on YouTube(the high quality version): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iJqdmkjSD2A

There was also an instance of birds crashing into a skyscraper in Texas: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4478166/Flock-nearl...

~400 dead.

ps: Obviously, it contains footage that can be disturbing to some.

I could see the predator chasing them to the ground theory being the truth here.

That'd be a hell of a hunting technique if the predators keyed into it: Driving the entire flock to crash into an object, allowing them to prey on the dead and injured.

This exact same thing happened in my front yard, except it was on a much smaller scale. The cause - falcon chasing the flock of birds into the house. It actually chased them several times until it finally forced several to hit the side. The falcon then proceeded to fly away with the dead and injured one at a time.

Anyone see the show 'Dark'? Birds drop from the sky every time someone travels back in time... could be that.

I think there are a few other theories we should investigate first, but I'll add time travel to the list.

Thought they died, nope just stupid birds. Sorry for being redundant, I could just say bird.

"Sorry, this content is not available in your region."

Germany btw

iirc birds are really sensitive to some types of gases.

Is it possible that a flock of birds flew into a pocket of such gas? Maybe methane escaping the earth?

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Cinema4D?

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