"Officials raise alert as 'zombie' birds fall to earth amid fears city may be in grip of avian ailment Newcastle disease."

"MOSCOW -- Amid reports of pigeons dying, falling from the sky and acting like "zombies," the Moscow environmental prosecutor's office has begun an investigation into what some media outlets and bloggers have called a pigeon apocalypse.

The environmental prosecutor has ordered the department of environment protection and several municipal agencies to investigate the mass deaths of pigeons and other birds in Moscow, according to the newspaper Izvestiya, which quotes Timur Brudastov, a senior judicial adviser at the prosecutor's office.

Brudastov notes that, according to the federal service for veterinary and phytosanitary surveillance, Moscow has become a 'hotbed' of Newcastle disease, a bird disease that can be transmitted to humans."

Alec Luhn reports for the Guardian August 19, 2013. [2]