NEW YORK, Dec. 22 (UPI) -- Experts are trying to determine what killed a flock of purple martins that fell from the sky in New York City.
The birds scared residents of a Staten Island neighborhood as they dropped, The New York Daily News reported.
"It was like Alfred Hitchcock's 'The Birds,'" said Donna Toti. "Birds were just falling out of the sky. They would land, lie on the ground, flap and die."
Marc Zurlo, another resident, said he saw birds flying erratically, "as if they were drunk," before they fell.
Officials said that some of the birds appeared to have died in mid-air.
The Health Department collected the carcasses to be tested. The birds appeared to be all the same species and members of a single flock, suggesting that they may have eaten something lethal.
Zurlo said that another theory in the neighborhood was that the birds had come into contact with ammonia.
