100 birds die after flying into NASCAR Hall of Fame building over 1 hour period in Charlotte, North Carolina

FOX 46 Charlotte
Thu, 17 Oct 2019 07:27 UTC

A woman captured a very disturbing scene in uptown Charlotte Tuesday night where there appeared to be hundreds of birds running into the NASCAR Hall of Fame, killing themselves.

Holl Belle posted the video to her Facebook page, saying it was like something out of a movie.

"Oh my God, look at them all," she says in the video as what appears to be bird carcasses littered around the entrance to the Hall of Fame building.

In the video, Belle speaks with a woman who says she works at the building. She says the birds had been slamming into the building for about an hour.

"There's something wrong with them," Belle says. "This is not ok."

Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police reportedly responded to the scene on Tuesday night to begin clearing up the birds.

"Yeah, I feel like this is like the end of the world right now," the employee says.

"Yeah, like this is where it starts. This is where it starts," Belle responds.

According to Carolina Waterfowl Rescue, a grand total of 310 birds struck the NASCAR Hall of Fame building Tuesday night. They said roughly a third of the birds were dead on arrival, ten had to be euthanized, 100 were severely injured with broken wings, legs, and other fractures, and the other third were stunned and will hopefully be released in a few days.

Organizers with CWR are asking the community to help them get results.

"We desperately need help feeding them and will be posting for volunteers tomorrow [Wednesday]. They all have to be hand-fed. I'm not sure how we will manage but where there is a will there is a way. Tonight we just need some sleep," Carolina Waterfowl Rescue said overnight.

Comment: Evidently this wasn't a wrong turn that these birds took, they were slamming into the building for "about an hour". Although the reason behind this mass mortality is yet to be discerned, a clue may lie in similar incidents, such as in June this year in Canada, birds were found to be found behaving equally strangely, with investigators concluding it was related to exhaustion and starvation due to the unusually cold weather: High bird deaths likely due to cold weather and starvation in Campbellton, Canada

"We've been having a problem where little birds would fly into our window, into our cars," Anderson said. "Even if the vehicles were parked they'd fly into them, and they'd fly into our fence.

[...]

The birds may have encountered bad weather during their migration, causing them to expend their energy reserves. The birds may also have reached their destination only to find a lack of food, which could be the result of cool temperatures.

See also:

• Mass bird deaths in New South Wales
• Hundreds of birds dead during 5G cell phone tower experiment in The Hague, Netherlands
• 'It's starvation' Biologists in Alaska see a fifth year of significant seabird die-offs