A video published on social media shows a flock of yellow-headed blackbirds falling from the sky in the northern Mexican state of Chihuahua. Why did this happen?
The weird event happened on the morning of February 7th, according to local reports of Cuauhtémoc, Chihuahua, northern Mexico. The video shows hundreds of yellow-headed blackbirds appearing to fall from the sky for no apparent reason.
The security camera footage shows a flock of these birds descending onto houses like a black cloud. Most of the birds are able to fly off and avoid the ground, but while the video continues it shows the yellow-headed blackbirds scattered on the streets of the city.
Why did this happen?
When it originally happened a local newspaper, El Heraldo de Chihuahua, reported that it was due to the high levels of pollution caused by the use of wood-burning heaters, agrochemicals, and cold weather in the area. It was also suggested that it could be due to an electricity spike in the cables of the area, but this was unconfirmed.
People on social media started speculating and said that it could be due to the 5G technology implemented recently in the area.
Nevertheless, The Guardian consulted with Dr. Richard Broughton, an ecologist with the UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology, and said that he was almost completely sure that it was caused by a large predator in the area.
This is because a peregrine or a hawk could have made the birds fly in a tight swirl that drove them towards the ground, and because the yellow-headed blackbirds fly in large numbers, the birds that were higher forced the lower ones to crash into the buildings or the ground.
“You can see that they act as a wave at the beginning as if they are being flushed from above”, said Dr. Broughton.
Dr. Alexander Lees, a senior lecturer in conservation biology at Manchester Metropolitan University, agrees with the idea that it was due to a predator. While he doesn’t discard the idea of doing a toxicology test, the most probable reason this happened, according to him, could be due to a predator.
But wait, what are yellow-headed blackbirds?
The yellow-headed blackbirds are a type of bird considered to be relatively large with large heads. These birds tend to breed farther north, between the north of the US and the south of Canada but go to the southwestern US and Mexico for the winter. They tend to stay in the northern part of Mexico, where the state of Chihuahua is located.
However, this type of event is not normal, and authorities are struggling to know if this type of event could be avoided in the future.
