The bird mystery of Haflong: cultures of mass bird mortality

Keywords: mass bird mortality, telecommunications, cultural geography, culture, sound, electromagnetic waves, speculative, human geography, social media, art, fine art, artistic research
Abstract Type: Virtual Paper Abstract

Abstract

During one September night in 1905, villagers in the hills of central Assam were disturbed by a tiger attacking their water buffalo. Whilst searching for their disappeared buffalo, walking through the dense forest with only lantern light, hundreds of birds suddenly descended, hitting them and their lanterns, plummeting to their death. British amateur naturalist Edward Pritchard Gee described the mysterious events as bird suicide, dubbing it “The Bird Mystery of Haflong”. This paper is interested in the phenomena of mass bird mortality events as both an ecological and cultural concern. It will trace a cultural history of the reporting of mass bird mortality events including scientific viewpoints on the increasingly anthropocenic causes of mass bird mortalities. It will also look at mass bird mortalities as a cultural phenomenon which has been subject to rampant speculation, fueling anxiety for the communities nearest to reported events. The paper intends to demonstrate how the increase in technological infrastructures, such as wireless antenna and the advent of new novel wireless data transfer technologies such as 5G continue a common theme amongst those reporting on mass bird mortality events, one of initial confusion and panic, which continues to persist across mass bird mortality sightings across the Northern Hemisphere. Moreover, the paper will demonstrate how new novel telecommunication technologies are both considered a solution to the monitoring and dissemination of data on mass bird mortality events whilst simultaneously symbolizing the current issue of rising mass bird mortalities events from causal and cultural perspectives.