My favourite feathered friend, the pied wagtail, seems to be suffering some sort of apocalyptic episode around the farm buildings over the last few days. I picked up a 2nd one today dead on the floor. Both have been still warm and not there one moment and there the next, but dead. Like they are falling from the sky. Getting a bit concerned now. Not the cat. She was indoors asleep. Probably not a sparrowhawk (one has been seen recently) as it would keep hold I guess? Maybe tired from a return migration and then chased by the hawk and dying of exhaustion??

Any better ideas.

It’s coming up to the breeding season, pied wagtails are highly territorial. Like other highly territorial birds pied wagtails will attack their own reflection believing it to be a rival bird. There is a possibility imo that your pied wagtails have flown into windows with the intention of taking on a rival and have fatally injured themselves. Hence appearing to ‘fall out of the sky freshly dead’.

It’s possibly one offending window (due to the angle of the light/reflection etc) if you can identify it then you might be able to draw the curtains/place newspaper etc. After the mating/courtship period things should calm down. imho

That would explain about the wagtail we had that continued to fly into our window at work.

We just thought it was a bit simple.

Hmmm, one was indeed below a window. The other was in the middle of my sheep yard. Maybe they had been fighting even. Tis a shame though as for me they are the most iconic birds of my farm and farming year. Great little characters. The grey wagtails are another, and like you say, I regularly catch them squaring up to their rival in the mirrors on the car.

We’ve got them on the farms too.. lovely things. Beautiful in flight and satisfying to watch them hang off the walls.

We have an upper window that reflects the sun as it tracks over the hill, we had similar problems with a couple of them last season finding them in the unkept bit of land just by the mistal.. Rob watched them track over the barn, head for the window then bounce off it and in a daze fall to the ground..
He reckoned the window was glaring the sun at them, bit odd but it’s the only reason he could think of. We can’t do much about it as the windows one of only two in a very large room..
We don’t see many dead, maybe a few a year?

Sad though.