They say don’t run away right after eating. Apparently this also applies to flying. Two independent researchers recently shared their findings that it is likely that birds will rain from the skies over Texarkana in late December.
Residents of the city of East Texas encountered the fishing phenomenon after strong thunderstorms swept through the area. While some experts theorized that the fish may have been dragged along by waterspouts, National Weather Service meteorologists told the Dallas Morning News that data shows there was no such activity in the area at the time.
Sharon Hill, a geologist and independent researcher based in Pennsylvania, and Paul Cropper, an author in Australia, found evidence that a flock of birds, particularly cormorants, may have regurgitated the fish as they flew over Texarkana.
“We’re both interested in finding out what happened in a strange situation,” Hill told the Dallas Morning News. “We won’t be dismissive. We’re not going to default to a paranormal explanation, but we want to document what happened and what the possible natural causes could be.”
The pair, who previously worked separately on similar studies related to natural phenomena, gathered evidence from the area and contacted locals who reported seeing the fish to rule out various theories. They first determined that the incident was not a hoax. “This was one of the better ones, because we’d never seen a catch of fish in such a large area,” Hill told the Dallas Morning News.
They also ruled out the idea that fish washed up on the ground from flooding, as the fish turned out to be above ground level, in truck beds and roofs. The fish were also not dropped from a plane, Hill told the Dallas Morning News, as there is no data to support that theory.
“The last we knew was a reasonable explanation were the birds, carrying them either in their beaks, their talons or their stomachs,” Hill told the Morning News. The fish, later identified as gizzards, also had features suggestive of partial digestion, Hill and Cropper found. In addition, cormorants have a habit of expelling their stomach contents, they said.
The pair also reviewed security footage from a Discount Tire in Texarkana, which shows six fish hitting the ground during the storm. The video evidence supports that fish did indeed fall from the sky that day, Hill reported.
Residents told Hill and Cropper they had seen cormorants around the time the fish fell from the sky in December. Hill and Cropper also spoke with Paul Merlich, executive director of the Texarkana Regional Airport, who told them that flocks of cormorants fly near the airport on a regular basis, the Dallas Morning News reported. They usually appear around the same time the December 29 storm swept through the area, he said.
Mehrlich told the Morning News that cormorants typically migrate through the area between fall and spring. He also said staff found fish “everywhere” on the airport runway on the day of the storm. Crews had to scoop up ten pounds of fish, which delayed one of the planes at the airport, he said.
The University of Texas Biodiversity Center at Austin will verify Hill and Cropper’s findings. However, Hill told the Dallas Morning News that the couple are confident in their conclusion.