Imagine you live on the outskirts of Santa Fe, New Mexico.

It's a sunny day in September 2020.

You're sipping some tea in your kitchen, looking out the window into your backyard.

You're feeling pretty relaxed and groovy, but then you notice something strange out in the yard.

You go out to investigate, discovering that there are

dozens of dead birds scattered on the ground. They look like maybe they're swallows. Looking around,

you can't think of why or how this happened. It's baffling and totally bizarre. Soon, however, you learn from the news that similar things are happening, not just in New Mexico,

but also in Utah, Colorado, Arizona, and Texas.

Songbirds are being found dead or dying by the hundreds all over the American Southwest.

Researchers eventually estimated that up to a million birds fell from the sky and died

during August and September of 2020. Most of them were migratory species, swallows, sparrows,

flycatchers, bluebirds, blackbirds, and warblers.

This terrible, seemingly apocalyptic event made headlines across the U.S.

So, just what the heck happened?

As usual, internet trolls and crackpots offered their own unsolicited and unsupported hypotheses.

It was the 5G cell phone towers, man.

Or it was aliens testing out their atomic death ray before they try to take over the world.

Because, of course, when in doubt, the most logical explanation is always, it was aliens.

That might be what some people think, but we aren't some people.

We trust in science.

The real science-based explanation for what killed all those poor birds has something to do

with extreme weather events.

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