A video has been viewed thousands of times in multiple posts on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube in May 2020 alongside a claim it shows crows “coming to Texas” after “attacking Wuhan, China”. The posts were shared as countries worldwide continue to fight the spread of the novel coronavirus, which was first detected in Wuhan in December 2019.
"The posts Indonesian-language caption\xa0translates to English as: “Viral !! Thousands of crows coming to Texas, America\n\tAfter attacking Wuhan, China”.", A woman’s voice can be heard describing the situation while filming the crows from her car., A logo for the MailOnline, the website for\xa0UK newspaper The\xa0Daily Mail, can be seen at the end of the video., Almost 1.5 million people in the US have been infected with the novel coronavirus and the death toll has exceeded 89,000, according to WHO data\xa0on May 19, 2020., The footage was also shared\xa0with similar claims on Facebook here, here and here; on Twitter here and here; and on YouTube here and here. Instead of the woman’s voice, the clips feature the sounds of panicked people., The same footage with the audio of people panicking was\xa0also shared alongside a\xa0similar claim in Malaysian language on Facebook here and here., The claim is\xa0false; the video shows black birds swarming in the US state of Texas in December 2016, years before the COVID-19 pandemic.\xa0The audio in the videos with voices of people panicking has also been manipulated., "Keyword searches found this Daily Mail video published on the publications\xa0Facebook page on April 18, 2020, titled: “Thousands of birds attack a car park.”", The original footage was published by video-licensing company ViralHog on YouTube\xa0here\xa0one day before the Daily Mail’s report., , "The videos caption reads: “Occurred on December 6, 2016 / Carrollton, Texas, USA", “‘I left H-mart and was returning to my car with groceries. I noticed the birds were very noisy as I was leaving, but the sky wasn’t filled with them as bad as shown in the video. I got to my car while some people waiting at the entrance of the building watching. They were smart for waiting because in the next minute, my car got pooped on big time. As you can see, the area filled with birds very quickly. Apparently, these are blackbirds and they gather just as the sun goes down. I don’t know the exact scientific reason for it, but there is one and it happens often. I remember seeing groups of birds like this a lot when I was younger, but it was never ever this many!’”, The audio in the ViralHog footage includes\xa0the same woman’s voice as can be heard in the first misleading clip and the Daily Mail video., Below is a screenshot comparison of the scenes in video in the misleading post\xa0(L) and the ViralHog video (R):, The Google Street View of H Mart in Carrollton, Texas, can be seen here and matches the buildings seen in the footage., , Similar incidents were captured in this YouTube video, dated February 2017, and this ViralHog footage from February 2018., Misleading claims about crows flocking the Chinese city of Wuhan during the coronavirus outbreak were widely shared on social media in February 2020. The crows, however, were seen in Xining, a city located 1,000 miles from Wuhan. AFP Fact Check debunked the misleading claim here., , Copyright © AFP 2017-2020.  All rights reserved.  Users can access and consult this website and use the share features available for personal, private, and non-commercial purposes.  Any other use, in particular any reproduction, communication to the public or distribution of the content of this website, in whole or in part, for any other purpose and/or by any other means, without a specific licence agreement signed with AFP, is strictly prohibited.  The subject matter depicted or included via links within the Fact Checking content is provided to the extent necessary for correct understanding of the verification of the information concerned.  AFP has not obtained any rights from the authors or copyright owners of this third party content and shall incur no liability in this regard.  AFP and its logo are registered trademarks.
This video shows a swarm of birds in Texas in 2016 | AFP Fact Check