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ARCHIVED - Mass death of 100 starlings in Catalunya: mystery solved!
Contamination and electrocution theories overturned by video footage of the flock being hit by a car
An incident involving the sudden demise of around 100 starlings which were found dead on a 50-metre stretch of the C-31b road between Tarragona and Salou in southern Catalunya has been baffling local and alarming residents since images of the lifeless birds appeared on social networks on Sunday, but the mystery has now been solved due to security camera footage from alongside the road.
At first various theories were advanced, although none appeared to hold much water. Some asserted that the death of the flock could be due to contamination from the nearby petrochemical plants, while others feared that the birds could have been electrocuted on one of the many power cables over the road in the area, but the fact that this was an isolated incident made these possible explanations seem unlikely from the outset.
In fact, when the security camera footage covering pipelines which run under the motorway flyover just west of Tarragona was scrutinized, it showed a tightly knit flock of starlings landing on the road only to be hit by an oncoming vehicle. Enigma explained!
Starlings are well known for flying in flocks so close to one another that it is tempting to refer to them as a swarm, and some had even suggested that the birds could simply have collided with one another. But this kind of accident has never been observed in the wild as the birds obey a survival instinct which makes them seek protection in the group, a behaviour pattern which can lead to them ruining single crop fields in a very short space of time!
There are only two species of starling in Spain, the common starling (Sturnus vulgaris) and the black starling (Sturnus unicolor), which can easily be mistaken for the blackbird. However, these two species account for an estimated population of 50 million, and in the winter they are sometimes joined by many others escaping the cold of northern Europe!
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