At least 50 dead snow geese were found in a Chihuahua field on Tuesday, the second unexplained mass death of migratory birds in the settlement in just over a month.
The field is located on Mennonite land in the Swift Current settlement in Álvaro Obregón, about 156 kilometers west of Chihuahua city.
Municipal police officers said the geese didn’t bear any signs of injury or any wounds from firearms.
Although local authorities discovered the birds on Tuesday, a man whose property is adjacent to the field said the geese had been scattered on the farmland since Monday morning. Snow geese migrate from Canada to the southern U.S. and Mexico during the winter months.
Five of the fowls’ carcasses were removed for analysis by the federal environment agency Profepa, which also requested the assistance of the National Forestry, Agriculture and Livestock Research Institute (Inifap), to determine how the geese died.
On February 7, 100 migratory yellow-headed blackbirds were found dead in Swift Current. The cause of the birds’ deaths remains unresolved, but surveillance camera footage shows them fall from the sky while in mid-flight.
Swift Current was settled in 1922 by Mennonite migrants from the Swift Current region of Saskatchewan, Canada. Many of the community in Mexico speak Plautdietsch, an old Germanic language.
With reports from Reforma and Milenio
