"Seabird Runs Gauntlet of Hazards on 40,000-Mile Annual Trip"

"The woman cowers inside a phone booth as a fury of birds tears through town. Demented seabirds hurl themselves at the windows, cracking the glass. Outside, beaks and claws swirl over bloody bodies in the streets.

This famous avian attack on a California seaside town is fictional: a scene from Alfred Hitchcock’s 1963 horror classic The Birds. But the winged tornado was inspired by a real incident in August, 1961, when thousands of deranged sooty shearwaters flew into buildings and crashed in the streets of Monterey Bay towns near Hitchcock’s home. They probably had been poisoned by domoic acid: a potent, brain-scrambling toxin produced by algae bingeing on sewage and fertilizer runoff.

Domoic acid poisoning is just one of many environmental perils that sooty shearwaters encounter on their annual migration, which is among the longest on Earth. In their quest for endless summer, they are tour guides of the ocean hazards that are driving nearly half of the world's seabird species into decline."

Cheryl Katz reports for Environmental Health News September 29, 2014, as Part 15 of its 'Winged Warnings' series.

'Winged Warnings' Series Portal