Beijing bird deaths

Dozens of dead blackbirds, mallards and magpies have been found in a Beijing suburb along the Xiaojing River. Initial explanations include starvation and unfavorable weather conditions.

More bird and fish deaths across U.S.

A healthy grackle in Georgia, 2009 (Quinn Dombrowski)

On Monday, 200 birds were found in downtown Yankton, South Dakota. The birds were congregating downtown in past weeks instead of migrating for winter. An animal control officer reported that a veterinarian had no initial explanation for the deaths, and that in her 10+ years of animal control she has never witnessed anything like this.

Last weekend, 300 grackle birds were found dead on the side of I-65 in Huntsville, Alabama. According to the UK Daily Mail, a witness to the incident said 'it looked like they were committing suicide'. Grackles have recently been found dead in hundreds in Arkansas, Louisiana and Kentucky.

The weekend before, CA highway patrol officers found 100 dead birds just off Highway 101 in Geyserville, CA, near Santa Rosa. The brown- and black-winged birds were intact and had not been shot.

Meanwhile thousands of dead gizzard shad fish have been spotted in Chicago harbors. The fish appear to be frozen to death.

שמות טו, ח: קפאו תהומות, בלב-ים

 and the depths froze in the heart of the sea (exodus 15:8)

Creation of Adam (zoom) / Michelangelo

When I see Your heavens, the work of Your fingers, the moon and stars that You have established,
What is man that You should remember him, and the son of man that You should be mindful of him?
Yet You have made him slightly less than the angels, and You have crowned him with glory and majesty.
You give him dominion over the work of Your hands; You have placed everything beneath his feet.
Flocks and cattle, all of them, and also the beasts of the field;
The birds of the sky and the fish of the sea, he traverses the ways of the seas.
O Lord, our Master, how mighty is Your name in all the earth!
(Psalms 8:4-10)

Three critical Shabbatot

Fire on Mount Carmel, Dec. 2, taken from Kibbutz Harduf (Uri Barakat)

1. Friday, December 3, 2010 (25 Kislev): Israel enters Shabbat while the Fire on Mount Carmel continues to roar. The fire began Thursday, Dec. 2nd, on the eve of the first Night of Chanukah, 5771. It claimed 44 lives and burned 55,000 dunams. Many have drawn a connection between the 2010 Carmel fire and the biblical account Elijah the prophet bringing fire down on Mt. Carmel, especially since Elijah the prophet features prominently in accounts of the final redemption. Elijah's display of fire served as a demonstration of God's power in reaction to the people's tendency "waver between two sides."

2. Friday, December 31, 2010 (25 Tevet): Just before midnight US Central time, 500 Birds fall mysteriously from the sky in Beebe, Arkansas just before New Years' Eve. In Israel, this occurred during the morning prayer of Shabbat, Parashat Va'era, the portion of the Torah which recounts the Ten Plagues. In the next 24 hours, 100,000 fish were found dead in a river nearby in Arkansas, and thousands of birds fell from the sky in Bio Bio, Chile. Sudden, mass animal deaths ensued worldwide.

3. Friday, January 14, 2011, 1 p.m. US Central time (9/10 Shevat): 200 cows die in Wisconsin. As another blogger noted, this is the first incidence in which larger animals are affected by the animal deaths phenomenon. In Israel, this incident occurred during the evening meal of Shabbat, during which beef is traditionally eaten, Parashat B'Shalach.

Update: The Japan tsunami and the French attack on Libya also occurred on the Shabbatot, March 12th and March 19th.

It's not that unusual

AP reports:

"It is not that unusual," said Kristen Schuler, a scientist at the US Geological Survey's National Wildlife Health Center. "There is nothing apocalyptic or anything that is necessarily out of the ordinary for what we would see in any given week." Indeed, the USGS keeps a log on its website with reports of groups of birds dying each week, averaging from dozens to thousands.

It may be normal for large groups of birds to die from time to time. It may also be normal for large groups of fish to die from time to time. But the timing of several incidents of mass bird deaths, along with several incidents of mass fish deaths, within days, across the globe is startling. Moreover, while mass wildlife kill is a known phenomenon, birds falling dead from the sky with no disease and no external harm is equally bizarre.

I wonder if in Egypt, each of the ten plagues were explained away by experts. I wonder at what point people started to wake up.

We are now approaching the Jewish holiday Tu Bishvat, and after that, Purim. In the Purim story, the Persian king's minister orders a death sentence for the entire Jewish people, as a result of a Jew's refusal to bow down to the minister, and only to God. Luckily, the king's queen is secretly Jewish, and through her exquisite beauty, wit and charm she convinces the king to reverse the tables, honor the Jew, and hang the minister. Purim is a celebration of the reversal of bad fate, and the ability of things to turn from entirely doomsdayish to entirely sweetened (b"H).

In the scroll recounting the story of Purim, God is entirely absent from the written text. In other words, anyone reading the story could argue that the miracle of saving the Jewish people was entirely due to Esther's beauty, wit, and charm; her uncle's wisdom to plant her as a spy in the palace in the first place; the king's love for Esther; Haman's lack of charisma; grim prospects for the upcoming election year; global warming; etc., etc. Indeed, all of these reasons were indeed the means by which the people were saved...but who was orchestrating the show? The point is, since supernatural miracle Chanukah (200 CE), it's all interpretation. It's all up to us. The test of the generation of Mashiach is emunah, best translated as steadfastedness. We have to find God within the Purim story; we have to find God inside the headlines, inside the wonders of creation, inside Egypt.

Take the Ten Plagues, which we read about during this week's Torah portion, Bo (Exodus 10:1–13:16). First, the nile turns red from blood (on that note, Houston's ship channel just get clogged with beef fat). Blood-filled nile is a little weird, but could be explained by various natural factors. Next, frogs are everywhere. Big ones. Again, weird, but nothing supernatural. Then, lice. If you've ever played with kids in Israel, you know how hard this one is to get rid of. At this point, you start to wonder: wait, first bloody nile, then frogs, now lice. Could there be a connection between the three? They seem unrelated, and each can be explained on its own by natural forces, and there have been somewhat similar instances in the past of each isolated incidents in the past, so, the Jews remain in captivity, and business as usual resumes...

We all know the end of the story. Pharoah connects the dots and begs the Jews to leave. God splits the sea and demonstrates his power over . Let's not wait for miracles, let's find Hashem in the times! Bo el Paro...come to Pharoah, because, you'll find out, that I was there all along ! ! !

Mass Suicides? #2

In my earlier post, I discuss an expert opinion that the 26 dolphins found dead in England in June 2008 had essentially taken their own lives, by inhaling large amounts of debris and mud. In the past, dolphins have been known to not come up for air or slam themselves against sides of a pool for no apparent reason, something that has led experts to believe dolphins are among creatures who can choose to take their own lives.

Today, more stories are circulating regarding suicide as an explanation for animal deaths in the past, especially when circumstances of an incident are highly unusual and when other plausible explanations are lacking. These stories are not further evidence in the latest trend of mass animal deaths, but rather as evidence suggesting that animals have a level of sensitivity and complexity which is generally overlooked. It is sad that we have to derive this understanding from such horrific circumstances.

1. Mass sheep suicide in Turkey, July 2005:

First one sheep jumped to its death. Then stunned Turkish shepherds, who had left the herd to graze while they had breakfast, watched as nearly 1,500 others followed, each leaping off the same cliff, Turkish media reported.

In the end, 450 dead animals lay on top of one another in a billowy white pile, the Aksam newspaper said. Those who jumped later were saved as the pile got higher and the fall more cushioned, Aksam reported.

2. 200 whales strand themselves on King Island between Australia and Tasmania. Apparently, this is not an isolated incident:

Mass strandings of whales occur periodically in Australia and New Zealand, as the whales migrate to and from Antarctic waters, for reasons that are not entirely understood.

Theories include disturbance of echo-location, possibly by interference from sound produced by human activities at sea.

3. Dogs known to leap suddenly from a bridge in Scotland:

In the past fifty years, 50 to 600 dogs have jumped over Scotland’s Overtoun Bridge and plummeted to their deaths. A few years ago, five dogs jumped in under six months. The Daily Mail wrote an article featuring reports of horrified pet owners who walked their dog over the bridge, when suddenly the dog would, without warning, leap over the bridge, falling 50 ft to the rocky bottom below. Perhaps even more disturbing, there are reports of “second timers” – of the few dogs who have survived the fall, some jumped over the same bridge again.

Many theories have circulated about why dogs react this way to the bridge. Some suggest that the dogs are deliberately committing suicide, perhaps due to depression in their owners or even a supernatural force. More recent research suggests that it may be the scent of minks, an animal known to live under the bridge.

Animals, who are closer to nature, are more attuned with the purpose of the world as ingrained in them naturally by their creator. If this is part of what is behind news, it is a huge wake-up call to humans to get the world back on track. Ha'olam lo hefker - this world is not abandoned, rather, this world has the potential to be a dwelling place for the Divine, and will be that one day, soon, b"H.

The search for explanations

With no signs of infections or other illnesses, and no external signs of what killed them, experts around the world are struggling to explain the mass animal deaths, while holding off on the temptation to connect events in Europe to the U.S.

In Sweden, 100 jackdaws were found dead on a roadside. Explanations remain vague.

According to CNN:

Autopsies were performed on five of the birds. The institute said they died due to "sudden, hard external blows," according to the press release. They had no signs of infection or other illnesses, and there were no external signs indicating what killed them.

"We have determined that the birds have died from severe internal bleedings caused by external blows," said the Institute's Marianne Elvander.

Meanwhile, "A county veterinarian has speculated that the birds that fell from the sky in central Sweden on Tuesday may have been frightened by fireworks, then run over by a car after landing on the road in the dark." (The Swedish Local)

Seems to me like this NY Times lesson plan designed for the classroom is doing a better job of asking questions than the media, which is either lazily relying on authorities' vague explanations for isolated incidents, or resorting to a Church's declaration that May 11, 2011 is judgment day.

A Vulture turned Mossad Spy

While birds around the globe are dying en masse, leaders and online forums in the Arab world are accusing Israel of a Zionist plot to train birds as spies...

Haaretz reports:

A vulture tagged by scientists at Tel Aviv University has strayed into Saudi Arabian territory, where it was promptly arrested on suspicion of being a Mossad spy, Israeli and Saudi media reported Tuesday.

The bird was found in a rural area of the country wearing a transmitter and a leg bracelet bearing the words "Tel Aviv University", according to the reports, which surfaced first in the Israeli daily Ma'ariv.

Although these tags indicate that the bird was part of a long-term research project into migration patterns, residents and local reporters told Saudi Arabia's Al-Weeam newspaper that the matter seemed to be a "Zionist plot."

The accusations went viral, with hundreds of posts on Arabic-language websites and forums claiming that the "Zionists" had trained these birds for espionage.

Mass suicide?

In June 2008, 26 dolphins were found dead on a beach in Cornwall. One expert compared their deaths to "mass suicide".

Vic Simpson, a pathologist who examined some of the 26 dead mammals, said today: "On the face of it, it looks like some sort of mass suicide - but the question is why? The dolphins had swallowed and inhaled big chunks of mud from the estuary. Their lungs and stomachs were full of it. That is very bizarre indeed."

According to the UK Daily Mail, "Experts say dolphins have been known to take their own lives whilst living in captivity after becoming distressed and confused at their conditions."

A friend, who I consider a mekubal, heard the news of about the massive bird deaths earlier this week. His first reaction was "they committed suicide".

In Chasidic thought, knowing the language of the animals and birds is considered a high level of spiritual attunement. While human beings are unique in their intellectual and analytic abilities, according to Jewish tradition, animals are in some senses 'closer' to nature, and thereby to their creator. In this way behavior of the animals worldwide is a kind of crying out of the spiritual sensitive of the world.

A global phenomenon

Comprehensive list of animal deaths en masse, Dec. 31st - Jan. 6th:

1. New Years' Eve: 5,000 grackles, blackbirds and starlings fall dead from the sky in Beebe, Arkansas. According to HuffPost, Dan Cristol, co-founder of the Institute for Integrative Bird Behavior Studies at the College of William and Mary, says that the fireworks explanation is unlikely, unless "somebody blew something into the roost, literally blowing the birds into the sky."
2. 100,000 freshwater drum fish washed up on the shore of the Arkansas river near Ozark.  
3. 500 red-winged blackbirds, brown-headed cowbirds, grackles and starlings found on the side of a road in Pointe Coupee, Louisiana.
4. Hundreds of dead red-winged blackbirds, grackles, starlings and several robins fall from the sky in Murray, Kentucky.
5. 2 million small menhaden, croaker and spot fish found dead in Chesapeake Bay, Maryland
6. 100 tons of sardines, croaker and catfish wash up dead in the Parana fisherman's colony on Brazilian coast. In the meantime, the sale of seafood has been suspended. See Shirat Devorah on the difficulty of finding fish during the era before Mashiach. 
7. 8,000 of dead turtledoves found on trees and ground in Faenza, Italy. As a Youtube video narrator says, "Peace is dead." (See previous post for how doves were co-opted into a move of Palestinian unilateralism). Also, the week before in Italy, mass amounts of clams, crabs and shellfish were found washed up on the beach.
8. 50 jackdaws found dead on city street in Falkoping, Sweden
9. Hundreds of dead snapper fish dead on Coromandel Peninsula beaches in New Zealand, many with their eyes missing.
10. 40,000 velvet swimming crabs (also known as devil crabs) carcasses found strewn across a beach in Kent, England.
11. Japan on high alert for H5N1 avian influenza. Hooded crane dies of avian flu in the Kagoshima Prefecture in southern Japan, the nation's top poultry-raising area. In the northern Toyama Precture, a wild tundra swan was found on a house balcony dying of what was tentatively identified as the flu virus, which led to a search in which 23 more birds were found dead in neighboring farms. In the Hyogo Prefecture on Japan's inland sea, officials decided to stop displaying the white stork, Japan's national treasure, to prevent exposure to wild birds.
12. A mystery disease killed 10,000 saiga antelope in Kazakhstan, which are already an endangered species. 
13. Thousands of dead fish were found floating in Spruce Creek in Florida on Tuesday. Locals say the fish kill, which is the worse they've ever seen, is unusual because the creek is warm. Buzzards and pelicans swarmed above the water eager to get at the kill, and brown and white pelicans made a rare showing from their usual habitat at the beach. Most of the fish that died were mullet, ladyfish and catfish.
14. Authorities are investigating the deaths of three whooping cranes found in Calhoun County, Georgia last Friday. An investigation was called due to the the fact that the birds were found together, whereas a normal predator attack would involve one bird at a time, according to the  US Fish and Wildlife Service.
15. 200 birds were found dead on a bridge over the Lake O' the Pines in East Texas on Wednesday morning.

Other recent incidents of animal deaths (prior to Dec. 31st):

1. Tens of thousands of dead menhaden fish washed ashore in New Jersey in August 2010, just days after thousands washed ashore 200 miles away in Fairhaven, Massachusetts. This was also around the time of the last solar eclipse, and the much-awaited Rosh Chodesh Av of the Jewish Year 5770.
2. More than 150 tons of red tilapia died en masse in the last week of December in the southern province of Dong Thap, Vietnam, resulting in losses of $2.2 million for aquaculture farmers.
3. Over 100 dead pelicans were found mutilated on the beaches of Topasil Island in December. According to North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission Law Enforcement Officer Doug Jones, natural death is an unlikely explanation.
4. In late December, dead penguins washed up on the shores of New Zealand in unusual numbers. Autopsies showed that the birds starved to death (i.e. lack of fish)

Update via Shirat Devorah: Map of Worldwide Mass Animal Deaths

A map of the US incidents:

Most of the media is caught up in a wild-goose hunt (no pun intended) after causal explanations. Aristotelian philosophy was characterized by an openness to causal and purpose-based explanations, i.e did I get up because my legs moved, or because I had a goal of making a sandwich? Modern science, on the other hand, has done away with purpose-based explanations, since it has a bias of only including explanations which can be proven by observation. The problem is that this approach creates its own tautology, since anything asserting that the world has a purpose is proven by introspection, learning, prayer and devotion, and not on an approach that cuts the human being off from everything other than observations deriving from the five senses (which all animals share, hence the proclivity to believe that we came from apes...=0)


Today, for anyone who grew up brainstormed by the exclusive education of modern science, believing that the world has a purpose is a huge leap of faith. However, in my experience, once one, for whatever reason, even from a genuine wonder from reading the news, is open to the notion that what happens in this world is not random, and is not only in the hands of physical/material explanations, and that as humans we have access to realms beyond the physical world (beginning with art, creativity, imagination, wonder, awe, love, introspection, meditation, insight...and ending with prayer, Torah, mitzvot, from a Jewish perspective), a mere openness to other perspectives on reality is the only way to access new insight, in a world in which God has become a bad word =0(


Don't forget to eat gefilte fish with kavvanah this Shabbos!!

Birds circling the sky in Jerusalem today (kayn hora):

More Wildlife Deaths, and the New Palestinian Embassy in Brazil

During the weekly Torah reading enumerating the last of the ten plagues, the phenomenon of mass wildlife death continues to spread around the globe.

Chinese residents examine dead birds (China Express)

In Brazil, 100 tons of dead fish have washed up on the coast of the fishermen's colony of Parana in Brazil since last Thursday, raising concerns of local fishermen.

Brazil is the first country in the Western hemisphere to host a Palestinian embassy. On Friday night, Abbas laid the symbolic foundation stone of the Palestinian embassy in Brasilia, Brazil's capital.

Abbas in front of the new Palestinian embassy in Brasilia (Press TV)

The event occured on the first day of the former president Lula's last day in office. Birds, who have been sending messages worldwide this week, were not absent from the ceremony either: During the embassy ceremony, marking a move of unabashed Palestinian unilateralism, doves were released to represent "peace", although laughter ensued after one of the birds perched on Abbas' head.

Adriano Machado / AFP - Getty Image

The ceremony comes after former President Lula of Brazil officially acknowledged Palestinian sovereignty over Judea and Samaria, controlled by Jordan before 1967 and by Israel since then. Since the announcement in early December, several other South American countries have followed suit, including Argentina, Uruguay, Bolivia, Ecuador, and, most recently, Chile. In the words of Brazil's foreign ministry: "The demand presented by his excellency (Abbas) is just and consistent with the principles upheld by Brazil with regard to the Palestinian issue," Brazil's foreign ministry said.

Abbas, Lula and Brazilian FM meeting in Brasilia on Friday
(AP Photo/Eraldo Peres)

During his visit, Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas also participated in the inauguration of new Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff, along with South American leaders and US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton. According to the Chilean daily La Tecera (via La Plaza), Abbas attended the inauguration in Brasilia to "thank the presidents" that have recognized the Palestinian state. While in Brazil, Abbas met with Chilean President to discuss Abbas' request from Chile to join other South American countries.

Rousseff and Clinton (AP/Richard Moraes)

Birds and the Souls of the Righteous

In the video above, birds encircle the Kotel courtyard, in Spring 2010. I have always felt there is something special about the birds at the kotel.

In the Zohar, birds represent the soul, and the souls of the righteous in the upper world are called birds, as they spend their days singing God's praises. In Zohar Balak, this theme is developed, and the souls of the righteous will also reincarnate as birds in this world for their final tikkunim (to achieve their perfection). When they chirp, they are taking note of good deeds that humans are doing, and putting in a good word above.

The soul of Mashiach in the Zohar is associated with a chamber of the upper world called "Bird's nest". According to Ohr HaChayyim, Mashiach is called "Bird". Read more about this at Dreaming of Moshiach.

As birds are dying and falling around the world, people are searching for meaning more than ever before.

The New York Times is now reporting that Japan went on high alert last month for avian influenza, putting its nationally-treasured white storks in danger.

From Shirat Devorah: In Kentucky, a woman reports dozen of dead birds in her lawn. 300 more dead birds were found in Louisiana.

At CNN, David Yarnold probes into the human experience of witnessing dead birds falling from the sky.

And Yahoo notes that many people are exploring the paranormal dimension of this news story.

According to the initial report by the Arkansas Livestock and Poultry Commission Veterinary Diagnostic Lab, the red-winged blackbirds died from sudden and massive body trauma, located mainly in the front breast tissue of the birds.

The soul of the world is crying, and the birds can feel it.

Falling Blackbirds and Dead Fish in Arkansas, Falling Birds and Earthquake in Chile

Some patterns emerging from the latest natural phenomenon in the Western hemisphere:

1. According to NPR, there is no causal connection between the 100,000 fish washed up over the weekend in Ozark, Arkansas, and the 5,000 birds that fell from just before New Years' Eve, solely within a 1-square-mile area. "There's no evidence connecting the two incidents. Beebe is about 40 miles northeast of Little Rock. Ozark is about 125 miles away from Beebe, to the west near the Oklahoma border."

2. In the same 24-hour period of the Beebe Arkansas incident, thousands of birds fell from the sky in Bio Bio, Chile. Immediately after the Bio Bio incident, Chile was hit by a 7.1 magnitude earthquake, whose epicenter was very close to the radius of the fallen birds.

3. Over the weekend, Chilean president Sebastian Piñera was in Brazil, where he with Mahmud Abbas, President of the Palestinian National Authority. In early December, Abbas sent a letter requesting Chile to recognize the Palestinian state and Piñera has suggested that recognition by Chile may come soon.

Clinton shaking hands with Chavez. To her right, Panera (AP)

 4. Arkansas is the state in which secretary of state Hilary Clinton began her political career. In her mid-December speech at the Saban Forum, Clinton is quoted saying: ""The lack of peace and the occupation that began in 1967 continue to deprive the Palestinian people of dignity and self-determination. This is unacceptable, and ultimately, it too is unsustainable."


5. The falling birds incidents happened in two towns which, despite being on two different continents, have highly similar names: Beebe and Bio Bio. Both of these names sound like Bibi, the current Prime Minister of Israel, who is currently ruminating over whether to halt expansion of Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria.

May all of creation merit to rejoice in the coming of Mashiach Tzidkeinu!