“Cold-weather stress” is getting the early blame for killing an estimated 2 million fish in recent days in Maryland’s section of the Chesapeake Bay, the Baltimore Sun says.

This follows the reports about hundreds of thousands of fish dying in the Arkansas River near Ozark (experts suspect some type of infection), thousands of birds littering the ground in Beebe, Ark., (fireworks may have literally scared them to death) and hundreds of birds dead along Louisiana’s Route 1 (perhaps because of a “controlled kill” by authorities or an encounter with power lines).

The Huffington Post says, meanwhile, says there have also been reports of “mass fish deaths … in Brazil and New Zealand.” Copyright 2011 National Public Radio. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.