They fall out of trees. They fly into windows. They stumble along branches and wobble their small feathered bodies as if they’ve had one marg too many.
Have the drunk birds come early this year?
In Gilbert, a city of about 1,800 people in northeastern Minnesota, the police chief sent out a lighthearted notice to residents this week informing them that there was no need to call the police on local birds that appeared to be inebriated.
The birds seemed to have been munching on berries that fermented as a result of an early frost, Chief Ty Techar wrote in a Facebook post, and some had gotten “a little more ‘tipsy’ than normal.”
But bird experts are skeptical that this public debauchery was really the product of drunkenness. It is too early in the season for many berries to have fermented, they say, and birds may be slamming into windows at unusual rates because of a large seasonal migration through the area.
Laura Erickson, a bird expert who lives in the nearby city of Duluth, Minn., said it was possible that a small number of robins or other species had gotten themselves intoxicated on berries, but those fruits typically require a longer period of cold weather to ferment on a large scale. Robins could also be fleeing “helter skelter” after spotting hawks, which are also in the peak of their migration season, she said.
Despite her doubts, Ms. Erickson doesn’t blame people for delighting in the viral story that drunken birds were wreaking havoc in the city.
“I think this week everybody is yearning for something that we can all laugh at together,” she said. “Drunken birds sound funny, and they are funny.”
Chief Techar said in an interview that there were multiple reports of robins and other small birds acting confused, crashing into car windshields and generally “flopping all over the place.” In one case, he said, a bird had flown through a resident’s window and lay dead on the floor.
Another behavior of drunken birds — a condition most commonly seen in robins and other thrushes, as well as cedar waxwings — is an atypical willingness to stay put when a human approaches, rather than fly away.
There’s no definitive proof that the birds are drunk, Chief Techar said, but they sure are acting that way. “I didn’t have a chance to give them a breathalyzer test,” he said. “But you can tell.”
Kenn Kaufman, a bird expert who is a field editor for Audubon, said he was more convinced by the explanation that yellow-rumped warblers, which migrate en masse through the area at this time of year, were adding significantly to the number of birds plowing into windows.
But Mr. Kaufman, who lives in Ohio, said drunken birds were certainly a real phenomenon in the natural world. Apart from berry eaters, drunkenness can also befall yellow-bellied sapsuckers that feed on fermented tree sap.
Unlike some other observers, Mr. Kaufman finds it more difficult to laugh at the plight of these potentially drunken creatures. He compared this widespread glee to the reaction to YouTube videos of loopy children after oral surgery.
In one documented episode of drunken birds from 2010, about 50 dead birds were found near a roadside in Texas, according to a report from the National Wildlife Health Center. The report stated that nearby berries had high enough ethanol levels to intoxicate the birds and result in “compromised behavior,” which may have caused them to be struck by vehicles.
“Fermentation toxicity,” as the report called it, is most common in late winter and early spring, when thawing berries promote yeast fermentation of the sugars in the fruit.
Ms. Erickson, the bird expert from Minnesota, said drunken birds could be taken to wildlife rehabilitation centers, where they would be given food and water to help sober up. A home remedy for a drunken bird that has been stunned by a collision, she said, is to place it in a box with holes poked in or a loosely fitting cover (and check on the patient every 10 to 15 minutes until it is ready to fly away).
So yes, there may be some drunken birds in Gilbert, and there may be some more getting plastered later in the winter. But ornithophobics don’t have to fear a terrifying horde of divebombing creatures like in ones in the 1963 Alfred Hitchcock film.
Chief Techar said on Friday that people might have taken his Facebook notice more seriously that he intended.
“It has kind of gotten blown out of proportion,” he said. “It sounds like every bird in our town is hammered, and that’s not the case.”
