Shortly after the news of massive fish and bird die-offs in Arkansas, hundreds of scad fish washed up dead on the shore in Michigan near the St. Clair River. Government officials say it is not due to contamination, but natural causes, suggesting that sudden changes in temperatures may have caused the fish to die.

The die-off in Michigan follows other massive fish and bird kills in Arkansas, Louisiana, Kentucky and Maryland.
In Arkansas, thousands of red-winged blackbirds, starlings, and grackles fell dead from the sky and tens of thousands of drum fish washed up on the shores of the Arkansas River, only one-hundred miles from the fallen birds. Reports say authorities are still investigating the occurrence, but are suggesting the birds suffered trauma potentially from lightening, hail or fireworks, that the fish and bird kills are unrelated, and that the fish deaths were likely caused by a localized disease.

Moreover, nearly 500 birds were found dead on the side of a road in Louisiana and 100 were found dead in Kentucky.

As for more stories of fish kills, state officials are investigating a large fish kill of approximately 2 million fish in the Chesapeake Bay. Some scientists suggest that it is likely “cold-water stress” and not water-quality problems that have caused the fish to die.

Fish and bird kills have also been reported in Brazil, New Zealand and Sweden.

Other theories, perhaps no more wild than blaming the deaths on fireworks, include that the fish and bird deaths may be related to government testing under the High Frequency Active Aural Research Program or scandalous corporations and natural gas drilling operations.

So far it remains unknown as to what is really causing the deaths of the birds and fish here in Michigan, across the country and around the world: weather, parasites, disease, malnutrition, contamination, government testing, gas drilling, the end of the world? It makes you wonder what Chicken Little would have thought if a fellow bird had fallen on his head rather than an acorn?

Conspiracies aside, the recent deaths of birds and fish are making the news right now, but massive bird deaths are not unusual this year, according to an article in the Huffington Post:

The U.S. Geological Service’s website listed about 90 mass deaths of birds and other wildlife from June through Dec. 12. There were five deaths of at least 1,000 birds, with the largest near Houston, Minn., where parasite infestations killed about 4,000 water birds between Sept. 6 and Nov. 26.

And for numerous reasons, massive fish deaths happen all too often as well.

With the massive bird kills, Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, “A Fable for Tomorrow”, comes to mind:

On the mornings that had once throbbed with the dawn chorus of robbins, catbirds, doves, jays, wrens, and scores of other bird voices there was now no sound; only silence lay over the fields and woods and marsh.

No witchcraft, no enemy action had silenced the rebirth of new life in this stricken world. The people had done it themselves.

Carson’s book is dedicated to Albert Schweitzer who said, “Man has lost the capacity to see and to forestall.”

Will the deaths of these bird and fish species lose the appeal of the media and fall from the public eye – much like what is happening to news of the devastating BP oil spill – or will humans do something to forestall further losses of fish and birds in the future?