Dead Birds On Montauk Highway

A mystery, of sorts, dropped onto Montauk Highway in Bridgehampton Tuesday. A flock of dying starlings fell from the utility wires and hit the road over just a few minutes.
"No one has any idea what could have killed them," said Virginia Frati, director of the Wildlife Rescue Center of the Hamptons, who went to the scene to look at the bird kill. "I saw a lot of smashed birds," she said.

She estimated that more than 100 dead birds were on the road and the shoulders, so many that any single cause of death would be unlikely.

Frati said that if the birds had been chased into the path of a truck by a predator such as a hawk, only a few would have been hit. If they had been poisoned, they would have died over a longer period of time, and not all in one place.

Michael Lowndes, a spokesman for the Long Island Power Authority - the birds were found just east of the LIPA substation in Bridgehampton - said the only way a bird on a power line could be electrocuted is if it were grounded, and it would be highly unlikely that a hundred birds would be grounded at once.

"I've never heard of it happening," he said.

One eyewitness, Francis Hernandez of Sag Harbor, said he was driving in the area about 8 a.m. on Tuesday and saw birds spiraling down from the wires and onto the roadway. "They were just spinning down," he said. "Falling down like leaves into the road and dying...I've never seen anything like it." He drove back past the same area a few minutes later and saw dozens of birds on the ground. "They were still struggling. They were hitting the black top but still moving. I picked one up. They were still warm," Hernandez said.

Frati said there were no burn marks on the feet of the dead birds, but that it appeared every one she looked at had blood in the back of its throat.

But the idea that they were poisoned raises a different question. Starlings are commonly found in the company of grackles and red-winged blackbirds, and none of those species were found at the scene.

Some of the dead birds were collected and sent to a state Department of Environmental Conservation lab upstate for analysis. But test results are not expected for several weeks.

The state Department of Transportation, which is responsible for maintaining state roads, removed the carnage.