Katherine Sidnell
Almost 1,000 dead birds dropped from the sky earlier this week, despite activists warning for decades about the ‘nightmare’ scenario.
Whilst it sounds like something out of a horror movie, it happened in the early hours with the birds later being discovered close to an exhibit hall.
Though it’s pretty disturbing, the freak event actually has a surprisingly simple explanation.
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Before you get too freaked out, the birds are not signally the end times or paying homage to Alfred Hitchcock.
Instead, it’s thought that the unlucky flock collided with the windows of the McCormick Place Lakeside Center, in Chicago – leading to the bizarre incident.
Though such collisions do happen, this was unusual due to the number of animals involved – so, what happened?
According to expert Annette Prince, director of the Chicago Bird Collision Monitors, poor weather had stopped some birds from migrating with that number swelling in recent days.
While there was an eventual break in the bad weather, low clouds and the large number of birds had contributed to the sizeable collision.
It’s thought that the main issue was the light inside the building, which drew the hapless bird towards the centre.
She told Insider: "All these things made the perfect storm for what caused such a huge event…”.
Despite this being an outlier event, the centre has made bird experts twitchy for decades.
After hearing the eerie news, Christine Sheppard, director of the glass collisions program for the American Bird Conservancy, said: "It's just absolutely your worst nightmare."
Explaining how the building’s design could have contributed to the weird event, she revealed that the building sits at the height where most collisions occur.
Whilst you might not be able to rebuild the centre, there are some surprisingly simple solutions including turning off the lights and anti-collision tools to deter birds.
"The solution — and there are many, many different kinds of retrofits available — is to put something on that glass so that birds can see and avoid it," Sheppard added.
However, these aren’t always effective – especially if other buildings haven’t made such adjustments.
"The problem is if you turn the lights off on one building, the birds just hit the next one," she explained, adding: "So to have a real impact, you have to turn down the lights in a wide area."
As no one wants a repeat of The Birds anytime soon, we hope that more buildings look into the eco-friendly updates.