There have been reports in the news of several flocks of birds mysteriously dying in different countries around the world. The UK papers today (the Guardian, Telegraph and Mail) all focus on the Romanian starling flock drop. The autopsies indicated that the cause of the drop was a drop too much. The birds had gorged themselves on the crushed grape–yeast feast discarded by a local vintner as being of no further interest to him. The starlings clearly disagreed with this conjecture and set out to prove their case, and in doing so, drunk themselves to death. There is no indication that the birds in the other incidents in Sweden and the US had been partying.
It is interesting to note that just across the Black Sea from Romania lies Armenia, and the BBC reported that the earliest archeological evidence of wine making was recently discovered in a cave there. This means that the danger to local birdlife of overindulgence has been around for about 6,000 years. Even more apposite to the problem is the fact that burial mounds surrounded the archeological winemaking kit. The sober archeologists suggested that indicates that the wine was purely for ceremonial purposes. One is left to wonder if perhaps it was the quality of the wine that left a lot to be desired. In any case the local starlings need to activate their Twitter accounts as their tweets have clearly been ineffective to date in spreading the word of the dangers of alcohol abuse and where they can join a 12-hop program.
I have heard of this - also have witnessed robins getting a bit tipsy on the pyracatha berries in my front yard - but they didn't take it as far as those Romanian starlings - just did their 12 hop in a zig-zag!