Unexplained Bird Deaths in California: The Sky Is Falling, and No One Knows Why

May 27

Written By Michele Edington (formerly Michele Gargiulo)

It started with a sound, a sharp, echoing snap that didn’t belong to the air, followed by something worse.
A bird falling, spinning, and dead before it touched the ground.

Then another and another. The sky, once a place for wings and drift and open gracefully, began spitting out bodies.

This is the strange truth gripping Richmond, California, a coastal town now shadowed by mystery.
Residents have watched in horror as birds plummet from the sky, sometimes mid-flight, sometimes after a stutter, always too fast to process. Some fall alone, while others fall in clusters. Many fall with the sound of an explosion…and nobody knows why.

It’s eerie and haunting wish a dash of creepiness, and it’s happening often enough to be more than coincidence.

When the Sky Becomes a Grave

At first, it was easy to brush off. Nature is messy, after all and birds hit windows all the time. They tangle with power lines and lose that particular wrestling match, sadly. Sometimes the things they find to eat are toxic to them and destroy them from the inside, out.
Accidents happen all the time, and while that’s incredibly sad, it’s also just a part of life at this point.

But then came the frequency, the consistency, and the numbers. Something didn’t sit right. Videos began circulating. One, in particular, showed a bird mid-flight…healthy, gliding, then suddenly twitching and collapsing, wings crumpling like paper. It fell as if struck by something invisible, something quick and deliberate.

The residents of Richmond began to speak up, and the internet, ever watchful, began to amplify it all. People turned their eyes toward the obvious culprit: power lines.

California’s Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) is no stranger to controversy, the company has faced public outrage for its role in devastating wildfires and infrastructure neglect for a long time now. So when birds started falling near lines, suspicions naturally grew. PG&E, under pressure, teamed up with the California Department of Fish & Wildlife and began an official investigation, launching necropsies (animal autopsies) on the birds that had fallen.

The results said that it was death by trauma, not electrocution. There were no burn marks or internal scorching. It was just blunt force injuries, some broken bones, and collapsed organs.

The birds weren’t being zapped. They were being struck…by what, though, remained a question.

Next came the pellet gun theory: could someone be intentionally shooting these birds from the ground? Could a person with a BB gun be responsible for all the falling, all the noise?

It sounds plausible at first, but it doesn’t hold under scrutiny.

BB guns don’t make loud, popping sounds that echo across neighborhoods. Birds have been falling from significant altitudes…far higher than a pellet gun could reliably reach. Also, there are too many hits and they’re too accurate. Too many consistent patterns for it to be one rogue shooter.

Also there’s the question of why someone would do this again and again, day after day. Locals aren’t convinced, and neither am I.

When Birds Fall Without Warning

This isn’t the first time birds have fallen in eerie, unexplained fashion.

2011, Beebe, Arkansas: Over 3,000 red-winged blackbirds dropped from the sky on New Year’s Eve. The cause was ruled officially “blunt force trauma” from flying into buildings after fireworks…though some residents still question that.

2022, Cuauhtémoc, Mexico: Surveillance footage showed dozens of yellow-headed blackbirds divebombing to the earth. Some survived, many did not. Again, trauma was listed as the cause.

2023, Australia: A wave of galahs and cockatoos were found dead along a river. Necropsies showed internal bleeding, but no toxins, no shocks, no obvious source.

Each time, scientists scramble for answers, and each time, the story fades, without a resolution. We’re quick to rule out the fantastical. But nature doesn’t care about our comfort. Sometimes, the explanations are weirder than we’d like.

Electromagnetic Radiation (EMF)

We live in a world blanketed by signals: cell towers, 5G, satellites, radar. Birds are incredibly sensitive to magnetic fields…some species even have magnetite in their beaks that allows them to "see" Earth's magnetic layout. Strong EMF pulses can disorient birds, make them crash, or even interrupt the heart’s rhythm mid-flight. This has happened near military radar installations and airports before.

Could a sudden EMF burst cause trauma without warning?
It’s possible, but proving it is nearly impossible without precise equipment, and those who have it aren’t sharing.

Solar Flares and Geomagnetic Storms

Solar activity has increased in recent years, and with it comes geomagnetic chaos. When solar storms hit Earth’s magnetosphere, they can disrupt animal navigation systems, just like compasses going haywire. For migratory birds that rely on magnetic orientation, that could be deadly.

A sudden solar pulse could make birds dive in confusion, misjudge elevation, or seize in midair, and if the timing lines up with Richmond’s events…it’s a theory worth looking at. I couldn’t find exact times to look up, otherwise I’d have looked into it a little further.

Infrasound and Sonar Testing

We can’t hear infrasound, but animals can. Military operations, geological testing, and sonar pulses have been known to affect whales, dolphins, and yes, even birds.

There’s evidence that low-frequency vibrations can cause panic, physical damage, or neurological dysfunction in sensitive species.

Is something being tested nearby? That’s the question no one seems willing to answer.

Toxic Pockets of Air

Birds breathe fast and their respiratory systems are incredibly delicate. If there’s a sudden release of chemicals, gas, or industrial byproducts into the air (even in invisible concentrations) it could cause collapse.

Factories, refineries, landfills, construction sites, all of these things exist near Richmond.
All of them might be carrying secrets the wind doesn’t whisper, but screams.

A Town on Edge

Residents of Richmond aren’t waiting for answers anymore. They’re filming, documenting, and organizing to try to get some answers themselves. Some are calling for independent environmental studies while others are installing sound monitoring equipment.

The birds keep falling and the popping sounds keep coming, and the explanations…well, they’re still lacking.

Theories abound on the interwebs, but answers do not. Birds aren’t just wildlife, they’re our canaries in the coal mine…quite literally. They’ve long been used to detect toxins, environmental changes, and even shifts in climate that we need to know before it’s us.

They’re tuned to the planet in a way we aren’t, so when they start falling in numbers, something is off. Maybe not just in Richmond either, maybe it’s everywhere.

In mythology and folklore, birds represent freedom, you know, the divine, they’re the bridge between earth and sky. To the Greeks, they were omens, but the Norse, messengers. To poets birds are a metaphor for the soul.

When birds fall from the sky, it shakes something deeper than logic. It taps into a collective fear we all have that the natural order is unraveling and that we’re not in control (or losing it somehow). Something invisible is breaking the contract we made with the sky, and that’s super unsettling.

We don’t always need data to feel that something is wrong, we know it in our bones. Our intuition will ring the alarm bells long before we can logically think things through. The investigation continues, and officials remain tight-lipped. PG&E insists there’s no infrastructure failure and the Department of Fish & Wildlife has issued no new statements.

In the absence of answers, the mystery grows, and with it, a sense of unease. Because if the sky isn’t safe for birds…what does that say about us?

What You Can Do

Stay aware. Document anything unusual, timing, noise, location, wind conditions.

Support transparency. Call for environmental monitoring in your community.

Think ecologically. Pay attention to your region’s wildlife patterns. Are insects disappearing? Are fish dying off? These signs rarely happen in isolation.

Support citizen science. Organizations like iNaturalist and local birding groups often detect patterns long before government agencies act.

This isn’t just a Richmond story, it could be a preview for other areas as well.

There’s so much we still don’t know, and sometimes it’s interesting to see just how little we’re told. We’re quick to forget that we live under a shared sky…one filled with signals, storms, soundwaves, and secrets.

The birds are trying to tell us something, and it’s up to us to listen.