Ronan Kelly
Retired 2020
Moscow investigates 'pigeon apocalypse'
Officials raise alert as 'zombie' birds fall to earth amid fears city may be in grip of avian ailment Newcastle disease
Alec Luhn in Moscow
The Guardian, Monday 19 August 2013 14.27 EDT
Amid reports of pigeons dying, falling from the sky and acting like "zombies," the Moscow environmental prosecutor's office has begun an investigation into what some media outlets and bloggers have called a pigeon apocalypse.
The environmental prosecutor has ordered the department of environment protection and several municipal agencies to investigate the mass deaths of pigeons and other birds in Moscow, according to the newspaper Izvestiya, which quotes Timur Brudastov, a senior judicial adviser at the prosecutor's office.
...
"Before death, they start to resemble zombies: they lose their orientation and fly without a sense of direction, then fall, already lacking the strength to get up," wrote Konstantin Ranks, a science columnist at the website Slon.ru.
Some cases of salmonella infection had also been found in dead birds, Aleksei Alekseyenko, an aide at the Federal Service for Veterinary and Phytosanitary Surveillance, told Izvestiya.
...
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/aug/19/moscow-investigates-pigeon-apocalypse-birds
Officials raise alert as 'zombie' birds fall to earth amid fears city may be in grip of avian ailment Newcastle disease
Alec Luhn in Moscow
The Guardian, Monday 19 August 2013 14.27 EDT
Amid reports of pigeons dying, falling from the sky and acting like "zombies," the Moscow environmental prosecutor's office has begun an investigation into what some media outlets and bloggers have called a pigeon apocalypse.
The environmental prosecutor has ordered the department of environment protection and several municipal agencies to investigate the mass deaths of pigeons and other birds in Moscow, according to the newspaper Izvestiya, which quotes Timur Brudastov, a senior judicial adviser at the prosecutor's office.
...
"Before death, they start to resemble zombies: they lose their orientation and fly without a sense of direction, then fall, already lacking the strength to get up," wrote Konstantin Ranks, a science columnist at the website Slon.ru.
Some cases of salmonella infection had also been found in dead birds, Aleksei Alekseyenko, an aide at the Federal Service for Veterinary and Phytosanitary Surveillance, told Izvestiya.
...
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/aug/19/moscow-investigates-pigeon-apocalypse-birds