Professor Ethan Temeles Explains Viral Video of Hundreds of Birds in Mexico Diving to the Ground
Boston.com reached out to Temeles, Amherst’s Thomas B. Walton Jr. Memorial Professor of Biology and Environmental Studies, to make sense of the Feb. 7 footage of “a black cloud of birds rapidly diving straight down all at once” and striking the pavement on a Mexican street.
Temeles identified the species as yellow-headed blackbirds. Though other birds have been known to fall dead from the sky when encountering very low temperatures or toxic chemicals, the professor said, these “birds were still moving, and it indicated that there must have been some predator” in their path.
“Temeles explained that diving down is one of the best ways for a flying creature to avoid a predator,” writes reporter Susannah Sudborough. “Birds might dive down and then hide in a bush until the predator is gone. In this case, Temeles said, there may have been something blocking the birds from seeing that they were plummeting straight to the ground, such as fog.”