If you cast your mind back to December, you’ll remember we brought you some mysterious news from North Wales, when hundreds of birds fell out of the sky. The starlings were found dead on a road in Anglesey on Tuesday December 10th 2019, after being spotted by Hannah Stevens. According to Miss Stevens, a ‘massive flock’ flew overhead before eating something in the road – they died an hour later.
Dafydd Edwards
When Miss Stevens got home she told her partner, Dafydd Edwards, who went down to investigate. Mr Edwards told North Wales Live: “I counted 150 last night but I gave up as there’s just hundreds of them littered everywhere. It’s as if they just dropped down dead from the sky.
“She said she saw hundreds of them flying over and thought it looked amazing but on her way back around an hour later they were all dead in the road. I didn’t believe her so I went to see for myself. It’s very strange, I can’t put my finger on it.” The North Wales Police’s Rural Crime Team counted 225 dead birds in the road, with some in the hedges alongside it – although bizarrely none of the birds landed in the fields either side. Officers have now posted an update on the situation, revealing what they think happened to the birds.
In the series of tweets, they start by saying that although the toxicology report isn’t back, they’re ‘quite sure of the reasons and cause of deaths to the birds’. They continue: “All examined birds had severe internal trauma from impact… The trauma supports the case that the birds died from impact with the road.
“It’s highly likely the murmuration took avoiding action whilst airborne, from possibly a bird of prey with the rear of the group not pulling up in time and striking the ground. “We still await toxicology, but from speaking to many people, looking at the injuries and previous world wide cases it appears by taking avoiding flight action the murmuration has flown towards the ground and pulled up, but some have not made it”.
Police believe that if the birds had been poisoned, they’d all have been affected by it at different times.