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200 dead starlings were found on a street in the city of Ferrol, in north-western Spain. National media said the birds “fell like rain” outside a hospital.<\/p>\n
The dead starlings hit cars and pedestrians outside the Juan Cardona Hospital of this small Atlantic city. Local police confirmed nobody was hurt.<\/p>\n
Mapi Rodríguez, president of the local resident association, said: “They came out of the trees in the emergency area of the hospital, flew a few metres and plummeted to the pavement.<\/p>\n
“The birds have been collected and we are now waiting to find out what happened.<\/p>\n
“We are told it won’t be easy.”<\/p>\n
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The regional environmental department collected two dead birds for analysis.<\/p>\n
The mysterious incident echoes the death of 225 starlings on a road on Anglesey, North Wales, in 2019.<\/p>\n
Sergeant Rob Taylor from North Wales Police claimed results from a veterinary examination showed the deaths were “probably consistent with the birds avoiding either severe weather or a raptor in the area”.<\/p>\n
A police statement read: “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.”<\/p>\n
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Meanwhile, 350 birds were found dead in The Hague, the Netherlands, in 2018. This was linked to the testing of 5G masts in the country, an explanation that quickly travelled from social media to national and international news outlets and that was later confirmed to be untrue.<\/p>\n
According to Wageningen Bioveterinary Research (WUF), which carried out post-mortems on the starlings, the primary cause of death was likely to be bleeding from trauma.<\/p>\n
Natural poison was found in the organs of the starlings, and while the institute acknowledged it could not guarantee the birds were weakened by natural poison, such as from yew berries, it was the most logical reason.<\/p>\n
DON’T MISS<\/strong> Further, the Antenna Bureau of the Dutch government confirmed there had been no testing of 5G masts near the location of the mass deaths.<\/p>\n They added that all transmission masts across the country are bound by safety standards and that “from measurements, radiation is well below the safety standards”.<\/p>\n This wasn’t the first case of a mass death event in Spain, either.<\/p>\n Last year, close to one hundred birds dropped dead within a 10-meter radius across a highway near a chemical plant in Tarragona, Catalonia.<\/p>\n Local environmental groups speculated the deaths may have been related to a toxic cloud coming from the Iqoxe chemical plant, where an explosion had shortly before killed three people and injured seven others.<\/p>\n However, it turned out the murmuration of starlings collided with a vehicle as if flew too close — closer than usual for the species — to the road.<\/p>\n
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