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.
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...
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."
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
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.
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].
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."
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.
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[ 5.1 ms ] story [ 97.0 ms ] thread"dammit, Bob, you had the map!"
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."
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
https://vm.tiktok.com/TTPdB4GvSk/
(Skip to the end of the video for the wire collapsing under the birds' weight)
[0]: https://www.weather.gov/ama/microbursts
[1]: https://lancasteronline.com/news/local/mystery-solved-unusua...
[2]: https://youtu.be/Q3Sr2F_xxLo
"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."
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.
Germany btw
Is it possible that a flock of birds flew into a pocket of such gas? Maybe methane escaping the earth?