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

Something similar happened in Australia a few years ago, one was due to lead poisoning the other I don't remember the cause but it only affected seagulls.

I doubt it would have been a collision with a plane, for a start to have injured that many starlings they would be a high chance that there wouldn't only have been dead starlings on the ground, and the starlings would have been badly mutilated as a result also.  Some reports mention bleeding from the nose, makes me think of what happens to whales when they are subject to some sonar waves from ships, the pressure causes hemoraging and that causes them to bleed from their ears.  Don't know if the pressure wave from an aircraft breaking the sound barrier would have any effect on birds though?

I thought you would be interested to know that the lab has confirmed trauma as the cause of death in these starlings. At least we can now discount poisons etc, although we may never know what the birds collided with. This is not the first report of a freak accident killing a number of starlings in one spot, but luckily such things do not happen that often.

Thanks for the update Trochilus! That's a fair relief although still sad for those starlings. Wonder what one earth could have traumatised them so....

Thank you for the update Trochilus. My original thought was an airplane but, as you say, we will probably never know for certain.

hi Trochilus

Thank for your update on the situation

So it was shock - wonder what frightened them do much?

At least it was nothing nasty behind it all.

Regards

Kathy and Dave

Trochilus said:

I thought you would be interested to know that the lab has confirmed trauma as the cause of death in these starlings. At least we can now discount poisons etc, although we may never know what the birds collided with. This is not the first report of a freak accident killing a number of starlings in one spot, but luckily such things do not happen that often.

Thanks for the update Trochilus. Looks like we will never know what happened, but thank goodness it wasn't poison.

Thankyou for the update.

Littleowl

Hi Trochilus

Thanks for the update. although as you say we may never know what they collided with.

I suppose a plane is possible for so many to be affected at the same time

Best wishes Chris