The CBC headline on June 2 was, “Fog kills songbirds in Bay of Fundy.” and the reporter added that the count was “thousands” of birds. All in all, it conjured up the movie, “The Day After Tomorrow.”
But Dan Busby, wildlife biologist for the Canadian Wildlife Service, based in Sackville, New Brunswick, said that such an occurrence, sad as it was, it not all that uncommon.
“We get reports like this one, two, or maybe every three years from our staff on Machias Seal Island,” Busby says. “And reports from Grand Manan fishermen are just as common; they’ve told us about birds just falling down onto their boats.”
He added, “What happened this year is that it caught the attention of the news media.”
Busby also said that he didn’t witness the birds personally, but that the reports came from sources that he considered reliable.
He said that when birds hit a fog bank, they get wet and they get cold. “When they get wet and cold, they can’t fly, and, of course, there’s no land beneath them over the Bay of Fundy.”