Dead birds keep raining down.

[Alana]

Ok, Petey of Lone Tree, but the sparrows, grackles, and pigeons, that were mentioned in the article of the birds falling dead at the beggining of the threat, are not birds that migrate.

 

[Petey of Lone Tree]

Ok, Petey of Lone Tree, but the sparrows, grackles, and pigeons, that were mentioned in the article of the birds falling dead at the beggining of the threat, are not birds that migrate.

You are correct, Irini, but notice I wrote "and navigate".

Also, migrating birds have been suffering the "same" fate, as the article entitled "2,000 ducks found dead" will show:
http://www(dot)ktvb(dot)com/news/agriculture/ktvbn-dec1306-ducks.78133c2.html

I also offer for research purposes the GoogleSearch link:
http://www(dot)google(dot)com/custom?q=dead+mallards+idaho&cof=&x=30&y=8

 

[Charles]

If the earth were slowing its rotation, as I read somewhere, thereby causing the poles to wobble ever so slightly, would this cause the magnetic lines of force surrounding the earth to become distorted? And thus confuse the birds, who according to one theory migrate and navigate by some sort of interplay between the magnetite in their brains and the earth's magnetic fields?

That migratory birds are being disoriented is indeed being reported. In recent years this is also ascribed to the warm, or at least very erratic, weather. Also nocturnal lights (espescially red ones) can be very disorienting.

The strength of the magnetic field of the earth indeed has been decreasing, to the point that it has temporally reversed in some regions. This has been going on for decennia though, and I do not think, that it directly relates to a decrease of the earths rotation.

Evidently, such changed magnetic fields could result in disorientation of birds during migration.

See for instance:
http://www.biophysj.org/cgi/content/full/78/2/707

A third important property of the bird's magnetic compass is the limitation of its sensitivity to a narrow range of magnetic intensities. Robins captured and kept in a local magnetic field of 0.46 G were able to orient only within a narrow intensity window that included 0.43 and 0.54 G, but were disoriented for 0.16, 0.34, 0.6, 0.81, and 1.5 G.

On the other hand, birds do seem to display a rapid adaptability to changes of the field strength.
See for instance:
http://lib.bioinfo.pl/auth:Wiltschko,W

To determine how fast birds can adapt to magnetic intensities outside the normal functional window of their magnetic compass, we tested migratory birds in a magnetic field of 92,000 nT, twice the intensity of the local geomagnetic field at the test site in Frankfurt a.M., Germany. In the local field, robins showed a significant preference of their southerly migratory direction, whereas in the 92,000-nT field, they were initially disoriented. However, when the birds were preexposed to 92,000 nT for 1 h before being tested, they were able to orient under this intensity, and their behavior did not differ from that in the geomagnetic field. These data show that birds require only a short time to adjust to magnetic intensities, which they cannot spontaneously use for orientation. Interpreting these findings in view of the radical pair model (Ritz et al. 2000), this means that they can learn rather quickly to interpret novel activation patterns on their retina.

Two mechanisms have been hypothesized that could enable birds to orient themselves within a magnetic field:

one proposing magnetite-based mechanisms, the other suggesting radical pair processes involving photopigments. Behavioral studies indicate that birds use both mechanisms: they responded to a short, strong magnetic pulse designed to change the magnetization of magnetite particles, while, at the same time, their orientation was found to be light-dependent and could be disrupted by high-frequency magnetic fields in the MHz range, which is diagnostic for radical pair processes.

This brings us pretty close to microwave towers, I think.

Ok, Petey of Lone Tree, but the sparrows, grackles, and pigeons, that were mentioned in the article of the birds falling dead at the beggining of the threat, are not birds that migrate.

You are correct, Irini, but notice I wrote "and navigate".

Yes OK, and that is true, but I do not expect birds to drop dead from the sky all at once because of being disoriented.

Also, the case of thousands of ducks that have been found dead and to which you refer seems evidently caused by a bacterial infection, as their bodies were found to be full of abscesses.
This does not relate to the recent cases wherein different species with a DIFFERENT feeding behaviour were found dead, while NO clear signs appeared during the necropsies that could point to the causes of death.

 

[Charles]

Yes OK, and that is true, but I do not expect birds to drop dead from the sky all at once because of being disoriented.

Sorry. I only anticipated the possibility wherein "death" would be the cause of them falling from the sky, while "death" could also be the result of "falling from the sky".

The next article seems to hint towards such possibility.

http://today.uci.edu/news/release_detail.asp?key=1151

"We found that the birds faced in the usual direction for their migration when the artificial field was parallel to the Earth’s natural magnetic field, but were confused when the artificial field was applied in a different direction," said Ritz, the lead author of the paper. "Since the artificial field’s oscillations were too rapid to influence magnetic materials like magnetite, it suggests that the most likely mechanism for magnetic orientation in these birds involves tiny changes to magnetically sensitive chemical reactions, possibly occurring in the eyes of the birds – we are not sure."

In the experiments, the robins could walk and flutter in their cages but could not fly. The birds oriented well in the Earth’s magnetic field alone, but were disoriented in the presence of a broad-band (0.1-10 megahertz) and 7 megahertz oscillating field, aligned at a 24 or 48 degree angle to the Earth’s magnetic field.

So they could only walk and flutter, not fly.

What happens when you are up high in the sky, and all of a sudden, you pass such MHz oscillating field and you can only walk, or flutter?


KABOOM SPLAT?

Edit: a pdf file of the original letter published in Nature:
http://www(dot)physics.uci.edu/~tritz/Publications/RITZ2004.pdf

 

[Petey of Lone Tree]

I'm providing this link which was supplied by one of my co-bloggers at Blondesense for reference purposes:

Space Environment Center
http://www.sec.noaa.gov/

 

[Jsf]

In France, "Science & Vie" (N°1073, fevirer 2007, p.64-69), a popular magazine, publied an article on Gulf Stream, saying there is nothing to fear of because it will not stop...