Bird Deaths Shut Down Downtown Austin

Who found the dead birds?
Anyone live downtown Austin? With Pets?
Just birds? No other wildlife. Rats cats, squirrels.
So with a weekends worth of poisoned birds collected in sacks and scattered about you can get a city center evacuated? That's quite a vunerability.

Did you ever hear of a "canary in a coal mine" ? They used canaries because birds are hyper-sensitive to airborne poisons. It's not at all surprising to think that a bunch of birds died from a poison but no other animal was found dead.

I live in Austin, though I'm out of town right now. But I can tell you that large flocks of grackles live downtown and pose quite a nuisance. I would not be surprised if some fed-up business owner or downtown office worker whose car got bombed once too often took matters into their own hands with some poisoned birdseed.

Grackles are a nuisance bird that poach the eggs of other, more beneficial breeds and have thus displaced lots of native birds. Not to advocate exterminating them, of course.

From what I heard on the way in this morning, a couple of cops on the downtown beat starting feeling ill and people noticed an unusual number of dead birds. I don't work downtown anymore, but, like vannevar said, there are a ton of birds in that area. Evidently, they have cordoned off much of Congress, but they were not evacuating any residents in that area. Wasn't expected to last long. I guess there is a presser going on right now...

I was in downtown Austin yesterday walking around (right on Congress and 9th) and did not notice any odors or anything else that was strange.

The grackles are more annoying than anything else. They make a lot of noise and peck at people so I would not be surprised if someone set out to kill a few.

"There is no credible intelligence to suggest an imminent threat to the homeland or the Austin at this time," said Department of Homeland Security spokesman Russ Knocke.

God, I hate it when they break out the "homeland" bull@!$%#.

I live in Austin, though not quite downtown. It was rather odd to wake up to this news this morning. The wife and I are both "bird people" so it's distressing as well.

Oh, and the grackles really aren't so bad once you decide to view them as fellow citizens. But if you cna't make that leap, I'll admit that they're capable of being quite annoying.

They probably died from the colletive Texas scream of anguish as Roma fulbed the field goal kick.

From News 8 Austin:

Air quality tests conducted at the site where the 63 dead pigeons, grackles and sparrows were found have come back negative.

As a precaution, the chief health official for the area, Adolfo Valadez, said some of the birds will be sent to the National Animal Disease Center in Ames, Iowa, and Texas A&M University for further testing.

Valadez said they want to rule out poisoning or viral infections as a possibility. Officials do not believe the deaths were caused by avian flu.

So for now it seems we're stuck with a mystery. But one that is apparently not one that poses a threat to public health. I guess we'll know more when we know it, and not any sooner.