What’s Up With Birds Acting Drunk Lately Around Northern Minnesota?

In the last week or so, I have noticed a lot of smaller types of birds acting weird lately. I first noticed it when birds seemed to have slow reaction times, flying strangely, and even flying into my vehicle while driving along roads in wooded areas around Duluth and along the North Shore. Talking to coworkers, I heard stories of birds landing on people's heads and acting strange in other ways.

My initial thought is that maybe the change of season had these creatures in a frenzy to find food, and not really thinking straight. The Gilbert Police Department sort of backed up my thought that it had something to do with the season change in a statement issued about the strange-acting birds.

Apparently the department was receiving a lot of calls about the birds, so they did a little research and shared the likely culprit (along with some topical humor) on their Facebook page. In short, bird migration hasn't happened on a large scale yet, and the recent freeze has led to a quick fermentation of some berries that these birds eat, giving a lot of hungry birds a food supply that is getting them "tipsy".

They go on to say the birds will be fine, sobering up in a short amount of time. While the department said these tipsy birds will be fine and aren't a reason to call 911, they did offer some humorous drunken bird-related things to look out for that might warrant a call to the police.