They fall out of trees. They fly into windows. They stumble along branches and wobble their small feathered bodies as if they have had one marg too many.

Have the drunk birds come early this year?

In Gilbert, a city of about 1,800 people in northeastern Minnesota, the police chief sent out a lighthearted notice to residents this week informing them that there was no need to call the police on local birds that appeared to be inebriated.

The birds seemed to have been munching on berries that fermented as a result of an early frost, Chief Ty Techar wrote in a Facebook post, and some had gotten “a little more ‘tipsy’ than normal.”

But bird experts are skeptical that this public debauchery was really the product of drunkenness. It is too early in the season for many berries to have fermented, they say, and birds may be slamming into windows at unusual rates because of a large seasonal migration through the area.