We must admit it: when we read the title of this news, reported for the first time by ABC7we thought of a poetic license. “In Richmond the birds explode“, Instead, no: the birds of the small Californian city are literally exploding, and a worrying rhythm, leaving local authorities perplexed. An example of this phenomenon can be found in Video below.
Fault of electricity? Richmond, which is located in the Bay Area of San Francisco, is a town of just over 100,000 inhabitants, overlooking both the Bay of San Francisco and on the Bay of San Pablo. It is a place with a rich population of birds, which for a few months now have been victims of mysterious deaths – More than 50 for now, at least according to the testimonies of the residents.
What is happening to Richmond’s birds? It seems that every now and then some of them collapses on the dead ground, also issuing a noise like a little burst. Some of the witnesses noted that the “explosion” takes place when the birds are laid on the threads of light, which led to think of a defect in the electrical network – however denied by Pg & E, the company that deals with its maintenance.
What if it were a sniper’s fault? Even the controls of the environmental authorities, specifically the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, seem to deny the hypothesis of an electrical problem: so far only two dead birds have been analyzed, but neither of them brought signs of electrocution.
This does not mean that they had no trauma of any kind: according to the CDFW, the wounds of the dead birds are compatible with bullets shot by a compressed air gun. Is it possible that there is some resident who enjoys shooting birds to see them explode in mid -air? The CDFW promises that the investigation will continue in search of the culprit.
