'I've been to Iraq and back and not seen nothing like this,' resident of Ark. town says
BEEBE, Ark. - The number of birds that fell on this Arkansas town on New Year's Eve night is now estimated at 4,000 to 5,000, a wildlife official told msnbc.com, up sharply from the initial estimate of 1,000.
Keith Stephens, a spokesman for the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission, provided the new numbers, adding that 65 carcasses of the red-winged blackbirds had been collected and were being tested to determine the cause of death.
"We may have something today" on the cause, he said.
The state Livestock and Poultry Commission Lab and the National Wildlife Health Center Lab in Madison, Wis., are examining the dead birds.
Commission ornithologist Karen Rowe said the flock could have been hit by lightning or high-altitude hail, or may have been startled by fireworks.
Mike Robertson, the mayor in Beebe, said the last dead bird was removed about 11 a.m. Sunday in the town about 40 miles northeast of Little Rock. He said 12 to 15 workers, hired by the city to do the cleanup, wore environmental-protection suits for the task.
The birds had fallen Friday night over a 1-mile area of Beebe, and an aerial survey indicated that no other dead birds were found outside of that area. The workers from U.S. Environmental Services started the cleanup Saturday.
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Robertson said the workers wore the suits as a matter of routine and not out of fear that the birds might be contaminated. He said speculation on the cause is not focusing on disease or poisoning.
"It started at 7 a.m., picking up birds on the street, in the yards, been run over. It's just a mess," Beebe Street Department supervisor Milton McCullar told WISC-TV.
Several hundred thousand red-winged blackbirds have used a wooded area in the town as a roost for the past several years, he said. Robertson and other officials went to the roost area over the weekend and found no dead birds on the ground.
"That pretty much rules out an illness" or poisoning, the mayor said.
Rowe said Saturday the birds showed physical trauma, and speculated that "the flock could have been hit by lightning or high-altitude hail."
The commission said that New Year's Eve revelers shooting off fireworks could have startled the birds from their roost and caused them to die from stress.
Safety fears
"I've been to Iraq and back and not seen nothing like this," Beebe resident Jeff Drennan told local Fox16 News on Sunday.
"You know my kids are out here playing and you don't know, is it safe?" he added. "They're walking around with chemical suits picking them up with gas masks and everything."
Another resident, Janis Donahue, told Fox16 that her husband picked up around 35 or 40 birds in their yard alone.
Rowe said similar events have occurred elsewhere and that test results "usually were inconclusive." She said she doubted the birds were poisoned.
The Associated Press and msnbc.com staff contributed to this report.