Dead birds at 250 in Beebe

LITTLE ROCK — Horace Taylor rang in the new year cleaning up dead blackbirds from the streets of Beebe.

For the second New Year’s Eve in a row, fireworks are blamed for dozens of blackbirds falling dead from the sky.

The animal control officer worked until the early hours of Sunday before taking a break. Taylor resumed his cleanup about 8 a.m.

“I picked up probably about 250 this morning,” Taylor said.

“We’re done now until Tuesday. I’ve got them all off the main roads and the parking lots and stuff like that,” he said Sunday afternoon. “We still have a lot behind people’s houses and in front of their houses and yards.”

City Hall is closed today to observe New Year’s, he said, explaining why he won’t be back on the job until Tuesday morning.

Beebe, where shooting fireworks is legal, enacted an emergency ban on fireworks after the blackbirds again started flying into objects and each other, according to The Associated Press.

Arkansas Game and Fish Commission representatives retrieved the bodies of dozens of the dead birds early Sunday but the state agency won’t be doing in-depth necropsies.

“We know what happened,” said Ginny Porter, assistant chief of information for the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission. “Someone set fireworks off and that’s what caused it.”

Porter said the sheriff’s office was patrolling the streets because of what happened at the end of 2010.

“They tried to apprehend someone who had gone into the roost and shot fireworks off and they couldn’t get to them,” she said. “We know that’s the cause. It just confirms last year’s incident as well.”

An estimated 4,000 to 5,000 birds, many of them red-wing blackbirds, died in the White County community last New Year’s. The birds were roosting in a wooded area near Windwood subdivision, the same area as this disturbance.

Swarms of birds crashed into houses, trees, roads and cars last New Year’s Eve.

“They don’t see well at night so when they’re startled, it’s basically they’re just flying into things. They fly into things and that’s what causes them to die,” Porter said.