But is it Earth itself that kills the birds? Seeing as it is the rock quality of the Earth we're after, how many birds die from being struck by it? Does flying into the ground count as being struck by the Earth, if it is the bird that launches itself against it?

[–] Jimmycrackcrack@lemmy.ml 10 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

If you restrict it only to being struck by a rock then actually, while still probably the title holder, the meteor actually probably has a much lower body count than one might first assume. In fact I wonder if there'd be any way to calculate the average number of birds/avian creatures in the space occupied by the meteor at the time who could have been directly hit by the meteor not just killed off from second order effects.