"Lights blamed as thousands of migrating birds crash in Utah" December 15, 2011|Associated Press
ST. GEORGE, Utah - Thousands of migratory birds were killed or injured after apparently mistaking a Walmart parking lot, football fields, and other snow-covered areas of southern Utah for bodies of water and plummeting to the ground in what one state wildlife expert called the worst mass bird crash she had ever seen....
No human injuries or property damage have been reported.
Officials say stormy conditions probably confused the flock of eared grebes, a ducklike aquatic bird that winters along the Mexican coast.
The birds plunged into a Cedar City Walmart parking lot, football fields, highways, and over miles of property that had been blanketed by about 3 inches of gleaming snow.
“The storm clouds over the top of the city lights made it look like a nice, flat body of water. All the conditions were right,’’ Griffin told The Spectrum newspaper in St. George. “So the birds landed to rest, but ended up slamming into the pavement.’’
Kevin McGowan, who studies birds at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology in Ithaca, N.Y., said grebes rely on starlight to navigate during their nighttime migration. “Before there were [artificial lights], the sky was always paler than the ground,’’ he said. “When all of a sudden there’s light all over the place, they don’t know which way is up anymore.’’
More than 175 mass death events, in which more than 1,000 birds died, have been reported to the National Wildlife Health Center in the past 10 years. Causes included disease, weather, poisoning, trauma, and starvation....
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