I am gobsmacked at this...............so sad...

That's horrible, the poor things, my first thought was they must have been poisoned, it would be nice to kept posted on this one, it will be intresting to find out the outcome.

I would guess poisoning too. Very sad indeed :( I hope they make the findings public and find a way to prevent this sort of thing happening again.

Hi everyone

I hope that all is discovered soon, and the Starling mystery is revealed to all and sundry.

• Today one of our Animal Welfare Officers collected 75 starlings from Coxley, near Wells. Only 5 were left alive after a flock had dived groundwards, presumably to avoid a predator, and had hit the pavement. Some managed to hop off into bushes, some managed to flap weakly onto the roof of a nearby house only to succumb minutes later to their injuries.

• Passersby reported hearing a 'whoosh' as the flock dived close to the ground. I suppose a starling can only take as much evasive action as it's nearest neighbour.

• Of the five remaining alive, one was already dead on arrival at West Hatch, and I had to put the other 4 down due to their injuries.

• Pics here

• I have seen a similar result of a flock of Golden Plover hitting power lines a few years ago, but not come across such a large starling mortality like this. Anybody else ever come across this?

Another thought to the equation on another Forum.  People are wanting to know why?  Lots of questions are being thrown about the 'bird' communities at the moment.

I hope it is not deliberate poisioning of some type or another.

Regards

Kathy and Dave

Can't think poison is likely. To cause that many casualties in such a small area would require a very fast acting and very noxious cloud (which would kill more than just starlings)  A slower acting agent would lead to starlings (& other birds) dropping from the sky/ dying at the roost for hours/days, not all falling together.

I'd put my money on an evasion manouvre gone wrong, a bit like crowd stampedes at football matches etc, especially if some of the leading birds did crash into glass. 

Hi MarJus

The story is certainly getting around the block at the moment.

It is on the BBC news too.  I wonder if it will be mentioned on the live news tonight?

12.00 Normal 0 false false false EN-GB X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/somerset/8560398.stm

It looks like not one survived the crash landing

Regards

Kathy and Dave

I'm afraid I can't look at the photos in the link in Blackbird's post just after 4pm. They are awful.

Hi Sparrow

Sorry, did not mean to be so grim minded Sparrow.  Sadly it is the newspapers who like to over dramatise things and the pictures do tell a lot what happened the the Starlings.

There is a discussion going on in another of my forums at the moment about the demise of the Starlings

There have a been a lot of reasons behind the demise of the Starlings

It could be the fact they met up with a plane in mid flight as a group and hit the propellers

Another theory is they hit a tall building

Dave my OH though they may have inhaled toxic fumes in flight.

If it had been a preditor they would have split up and gone their separate ways to confuse the preditor for their own protection

I am sure that there will be a conclusion to this story in the near future.

Regards

Kathy and Dave

Hi Blackbird,

No need to apologise!!!! I'm not really squeamish. I was only thinking of my beautiful starlings, and how they have been noticable by their absence today - loads of berry suet pellets left - I am hoping they couldn't have made it to the West Country !!!!

What an awful occurrence - if I were the poor person who witnessed it I don't know how I'd ever move on from it, it must have been a terrible sight.

It seems most sensible to me that they were, as a flock, trying to evade a predator such as a sparrowhawk and ended up crashing to the ground en masse in defence of their poor little lives. What a shame :(