Some birds in southeastern Manitoba are flying while intoxicated.

Many people in the area have recently noticed birds behaving oddly and smashing into places they normally would not. Local bird enthusiast Dennis Fast explains that this fall’s unusual pattern of heating and cooling has caused berries and fruits to ferment in such a way as to have a traceable alcohol content. “When birds consume it,” laughs Fast, “they can literally get drunk.”

Fast notes that this phenomenon normally occurs in spring: “Typically the frost comes quite a bit later and then it doesn’t leave so the fruit is frozen and preserved throughout the winter until spring.”

Because of a bird’s hollow bone structure, they are what one could call “lightweights” says Fast who describes what a drunken bird looks like: “They start staggering around, they have trouble flying straight, all kinds of weird things happen.” 

The Bohemian Waxwing is one bird commonly affected by this issue: they fly from the Rockies to the prairies every winter and really enjoy Manitoba’s crab apples indicates Fast , who concedes that any bird that eats too many bad berries will likely feel a little tipsy.