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After munching on berries that fermented due to an early frost, they get ‘typsy’ and fly into windows
They fall out of trees. They fly into windows. They stumble along branches and wobble their small feathered bodies as if they’ve had one marg too many.
Have the drunk birds come early this year?
In Gilbert, a city of about 1,800 people in northeastern Minnesota, the police chief sent out a lighthearted notice to residents this week informing them that there was no need to call police on local birds that appeared to be inebriated. The birds seemed to have been munching on berries that fermented as a result of an early frost, chief Ty Techar wrote in a Facebook post, and some had gotten “more ‘tipsy’ than normal.” But bird experts are skeptical that this public debauchery was really the product of drunkenness. It is too early in the season for many berries to have fermented, they say, and birds may be slamming into windows at unusual rates because of a large seasonal migration through the area. In one case, he said, a bird had flown through a resident’s window and lay dead on the floor. Another behaviour of drunken birds — a condition most commonly seen in robins and other thrushes, as well as cedar waxwings — is an atypical willingness to stay put when a human approaches, rather than fly away. There’s no definitive proof that the birds are drunk, Mr. Techar said, but they sure are acting that way. “I didn’t have a chance to give them a breathalyzer test,” he said. “But you can tell.”NY Times
Source : https://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-life/drunk-birds-puts-spotlight-on-small-us-city/article25162595.ece
