These events may be more easily explained as one of the media picking up on
a single event, then readers becoming hyper-alert to a somewhat rare but
daily (somewhere) *occurrence** *and reporting it. This creates the illusion
of an expanding or up-trending problem. A common social phenomenon taught
in psych 101.

There are common population estimates of 200 million Starlings and 200
million Red-winged Blackbirds in North America. That's 400 million members
of these two species alone.

To put this event into perspective.....

If their average life expectancy is 1.5 years, which is a commonly
considered average for a passerine, then an average of 730,593 of them must
die every single day of the year for the population to remain constant in
North America. This rate might be 10 times higher during the winter. Even
if the average lifespan were 5 years, the number dying would be more than
200k per day.

Then we have the other species of blackbirds, grackles and crows, all of
which are called blackbirds by most laymen.




Scott R
Yakima, WA
mryakima at gmail dot com






On Wed, Jan 5, 2011 at 6:22 PM, Kelly McAllister
<mcallisters4 at comcast.net>wrote:

>
> So, according to a USA today story, when someone sets off fireworks
> immediately adjacent to a night roost and causes the deaths of an estimated
> 5,000 birds, this is the perspective of the Arkansas Fish and Game agency,
> as articulated by Karen Rowe, their ornithologist:
>
> "But it's taught Rowe that she and other wildlife experts need to do a
> better job of educating the public about the fact that wild animals die all
> the time. A bird that manages to hatch and leave the nest still has only a
> 70% chance of making it to its first birthday, she points out."
>
> "Birds don't go to the bird hospital and get put on life support and die
> there. They just die. Mother Nature is not a nice lady," she says.
>
> Not all of the birds were blackbirds. Some were European Starlings. But,
> still, many of these dead birds are protected under the Migratory Bird
> Treaty Act. Government agencies go to great lengths to avoid violating the
> Migratory Bird Treaty Act in the course of doing normal, legal activities.
> So, why does a government employee, representing the agency charged with
> stewardship of this public resource, feel compelled to try to get people to
> "chill" because, after all, birds die all of the time. So, how does an
> Arkansas Fish and Game employee react when they come across someone with a
> shotgun and a dead hawk or owl who tells them to calm down and put away
> their citation pad because, after all, these birds die all of the time.
>
> Kelly McAllister
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: tweeters-bounces at mailman2.u.washington.edu
> [mailto:tweeters-bounces at mailman2.u.washington.edu] On Behalf Of Bill
> Anderson
> Sent: Wednesday, January 05, 2011 4:43 PM
> To: tweeters at u.washington.edu
> Subject: [Tweeters] Arkansas bird deaths explained
>
> The short answer: fireworks.
>
> http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_thelookout/20110105/ts_yblog_thelookout/myster
> ious-bird-deaths-caused-by-fireworks<http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_thelookout/20110105/ts_yblog_thelookout/mysterious-bird-deaths-caused-by-fireworks>
>
> Bill Anderson; Edmonds, WA.
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Tweeters mailing list
> Tweeters at u.washington.edu
> http://mailman2.u.washington.edu/mailman/listinfo/tweeters
>
> _______________________________________________
> Tweeters mailing list
> Tweeters at u.washington.edu
> http://mailman2.u.washington.edu/mailman/listinfo/tweeters
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mailman1.u.washington.edu/pipermail/tweeters/attachments/20110105/336ed97e/attachment.htm