Conspiracy theorists spooked by birds

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. - The moon turns blood red. The earth shakes. Soldiers die in wars. And the world keeps spinning, even though these events fit neatly into apocalyptic predictions.

So why, when swarms of winged creatures hit the dirt in Arkansas and elsewhere, do some indulge their inner conspiracy theorists and believe more than ever that the end of days is near?

"There's no prophecy in the Bible about the birds falling from the sky," says Bart D. Ehrman, a religious studies professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill who sometimes teaches a class called "Apocalypse Now and Then."

But scientific debunking hasn't stopped the speculation since thousands of blackbirds rained down on a small town in Arkansas on New Year's Eve, the first in a series of mass animal deaths that started less than two weeks after a total lunar eclipse.

Hundreds more dead birds have descended on Louisiana, Tennessee and Kentucky, and scores of crow-like birds croaked in Sweden. Add in 100,000 fish that washed ashore in Arkansas and you've got the making of more than a few doomsday scenarios.

People are airing their suspicions online, making "birds fall from sky" and "birds and fish dying" top Google search suggestions for the word "birds."

The talk isn't limited to speculation the world is ending: Some guess it was a UFO. It was the government. It was a government-controlled UFO. (Is there really any other kind?) Lightning did it. It all comes back to the Alfred Hitchcock movie "The Birds." It was the "Angry Birds" game. One spectacularly dumb bird led his feathered compatriots in a fatal plunge.

Scientists have chalked up the deaths of some 5,000 red-winged blackbirds in Beebe, Ark., to celebratory fireworks. They say the loud cracks and booms likely sent the birds into such a tizzy that they crashed into homes, cars and each other before plummeting to their deaths.

"I think it's safe to say that there was no secret conspiracy by anyone," says Thurman Booth, a wildlife services director in the state where events kick-started the falling foul trend. "It is not the beginning of the apocalypse. It was not nerve gas. It was not poison. I mean, all these things have been seriously proposed by people all over the world."

For starters, mass wildlife deaths like the bird drop-offs in the South are quite common. In 1973, a hailstorm in Arkansas encased ducks in so much ice they were described as feathery bowling balls.

In general, blackbirds live three years, tops. They roost with thousands, or even millions, of other birds. Simple math dictates that lots of them are going to die, Booth says, and their remains don't vanish into thin air. It's not a biological big deal because red-winged blackbirds are among North America's most abundant birds, with somewhere between 100 million and 200 million across the U.S.