By Tim Binnall
Authorities in Wales are trying to get to the bottom of a rather gruesome mystery after the bodies of hundreds of dead birds were discovered in a road. The bizarre incident reportedly occurred on Tuesday afternoon near the village of Bodedern on the Welsh island of Anglesey. Resident Hannah Stevens says that she initially saw the flock of starlings soaring through the sky earlier in the day as she was on her way to the doctor and marveled at the amazing sight.
However, when she returned home from the trip, Stevens was aghast to find that the road was now littered with the bodies of the birds. She informed her boyfriend Dafydd Edwards about the unsettling scene and was equally unnerved when he went to investigate the situation. "It was very distressing," he recalled, observing that it appeared as if the starlings had simply dropped dead in mid-flight and fell to the ground. Edwards theorized that perhaps the birds had been poisoned, but as of now the case remains unsolved.
To that end, police investigating the matter reported that around 225 of the dead birds were found in the road and there were many more starling bodies discovered in the nearby hedges. Officials with the Welsh Animal and Plant Health Agency subsequently collected some of the dead creatures for testing in the hopes that an examination will provide some answers as to what may have caused the distressing die off. While we wait for an answer to the mystery, it's worth noting that an eerily similar case involving a flock of dead starlings unfolded in Canada last year and, in that instance, it was determined that the birds perished when an attempt to avoid a predator went wildly awry and several of the animals perished when they flew head first into the pavement.