Overheard a guy at the hardware store say 5G towers are causing bird deaths in his town

I was grabbing some paint last Saturday and this older dude was telling the cashier that he's counted 47 dead birds under the new tower near his house in the last 3 months. He seemed dead serious, not joking around. It made me wonder if there's any real science behind that claim or if it's just coincidence with a weird bird flu season. I looked it up later and found some studies from 2021 that say radio frequencies can mess with bird navigation, but nothing concrete about towers specifically. Has anyone else heard similar stories or got a link to actual research on this?

2 comments

2 Comments

ivangrant6d ago

47 dead birds under one tower in 3 months? That's a wild number, almost hard to swallow without a second source backing it up. Did he mention if any other people in his town are seeing the same thing?

olivia5736d agoMost Upvoted

The 47 number caught me off guard too. I used to think cell towers were mostly harmless, maybe a minor inconvenience at worst. But a friend of mine who works in wildlife rehab near a tower in Ohio told me they regularly collect 10-15 dead birds a week from the same spot, which adds up fast. I checked a study from the US Fish and Wildlife Service a while back and it estimated up to a billion birds die from building and tower collisions annually in North America alone that made me rethink everything. I don't know if other folks in that town are seeing it, but the pattern seems consistent enough that I wouldn't brush it off without looking closer.