Video shows hundreds of blackbirds mysteriously plummet from the sky — many nosediving to their deaths

Hundreds of yellow-headed blackbirds swarmed over Chihuahua, Mexico, last week when something knocked them to the ground, leaving dozens of dead birds on the street.

Security camera footage captured the incident, showing the swarm of blackbirds suddenly descending on a house. Most of the birds flew away after bathing, but dozens of them were seen motionless on the sidewalk and on the street. The incident happened around 5 a.m. on Feb. 7, according to local reports, and bird species are believed to have been migrating to Mexico from northern Canada when they collapsed.

Local media report Cuauhtémoc reported that experts initially believed that the birds may have died from inhalation of toxic smoke or that the birds had come into contact with electrical wires that suddenly received a power overload.

But the mystery continues to surround the incident, with experts trying to offer various explanations for what could have happened. On February 9, the local radio station La Ranchera de Cuauhtémoc reported that some experts believed that the birds had lost their stability during the flight and collided with each other.

Other experts have suggested that a predator may have caused the fatal crash. Environmentalist Richard Broughton told The Guardian he was almost certain that this was the case, as birds of prey, like a predator, would cause the birds to form a narrow vortex and lead them to the ground. Birds clinging to the lower areas of the swarm reportedly crashed directly to the ground, he said.

“It looks like a raptor like a pilgrim or a hawk has been chasing a herd, as they do with murmuring starlings, and they have crashed when the herd was forced to come down,” he told the network. “It can be seen that they act like a wave at first, as if they are being dragged from above.”

And while it’s unusual, this isn’t the first time this herd has fallen.

Also last week, some people in Pembrokeshire, Wales, encountered a “strange sight” of about 200 starlings falling from the sky. A man working in the area told a local outlet that he heard a loud “electric type” blow and then “a load of birds landed in my car.”

“It’s like there are hundreds of birds in the sky and all of a sudden they just died and fell to the ground,” he said. “It was quite surreal last night to be honest with you, not something I’ve ever experienced before.”

Another such situation occurred in Delta, British Columbia, in 2018, when about 200 starlings crashed to the ground. The Canadian Wildlife Service for the Environment and Climate Change later said the herd had been chased by a larger bird, which caused them to swarm, and that 42 of the birds had died as soon as they touched the ground. .

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• Mexico
• blackbirds