Dead birds not poisoned

[urbpan]

That mysterious bird die-off that closed Downtown Austin for several hours on January 8th was apparently not caused by poisoning, which is the cause that I predicted. Instead the birds were found to be carrying huge multi-species parasite loads. What caused that is still unclear.

The article.

Comments

[bellisaurius.livejournal.com]

Parasite loads?

I am so never letting my cats out to hunt.

[urbpan.livejournal.com]

Parasite load. I love that term. Every animal carries a parasite load.

Outside cats are bad.

[cailin-t.livejournal.com]

crazy, and very interesting. thanks for posting.

[bellisaurius.livejournal.com]

Ah, I should have known better. Let my imagination get carried away with the term.

I was sort of imagining a bacterial city, with some upscale protzoan neighborhoods, as well as some slums where the nematodes hang out and sell illicit antibiotics (apparently, the gram negatives find small nonfatal doses of antibiotics give them something resembling a high).

I imagine that they complain about the lack of adequate public transportation (erm, motility, in kinder words), or perhaps affordable housing in the gullet.


As to the cats, I know better, but every time I see that glint in their eyes when they watch the birds or squirrels, I just want to let them out to do they're thing. What's really bad is this woodpecker who hangs out on my window screen once every couple days. I think he's just perching there to taunt them.

[vyoma.livejournal.com]

Sounds at first blush like something hit their immune systems.

FYI, something's been killing ducks here. I haven't seen a thing about it in the papers, but I've noticed it on my own. I'm seeing unusually high numbers of dead muscovy ducks. Gotta wonder about it.

BTW, certain heavy metals can play havoc with the immune system, if I'm not mistaken. I wonder if they're going to find elevated cadmium in these birds. Just a hunch, though.

[cottonmanifesto.livejournal.com]

WHICH parasites?!

[urbpan.livejournal.com]

You're welcome! I hope we learn more.

[urbpan.livejournal.com]

Weird. I wonder if the muscovy ducks are vulnerable to the lead fishing sinkers. I know some waterfowl eat them and succomb to lead poinsoning. Where would cadmium come from? some industrial source?

[urbpan.livejournal.com]

Again, a maddening lack of specifics. I assume roundworms, but who knows?

[cottonmanifesto.livejournal.com]

it's pretty damn frustrating.

[laurushka.livejournal.com]

It's just like Who Really Killed Cock Robin? (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=0064404056/5008-4640089-399472)!

[bellisaurius.livejournal.com]

They did mention the bird's stomachs were empty. This could imply they had a loss of appetite.

[cottonmanifesto.livejournal.com]

that's not generally good parasite m.o., they like to keep their hosts alive so that they, in turn, can live and reproduce.

What species of birds?

[treeclimber47.livejournal.com]

Am I missing something? I can't find any reference to what species of birds were found dead (or as CottonManifesto noted what kind of parasites?). Is there an assumption that they are city pigeons?

We know that most if not all wild animals have parasite load. For these birds to apparently die from it indicates they were losing the battle to feed their resident bugs and themselves. So something else is going on, either a sudden reduction in food supply or some other stressor (infectious agent or toxin) that is making them too weak to feed. The temperature drop from 50 to 40 may have been the tipping point where they couldn't keep their malnourished metabolism fueled enough to make it through another night.

Then again it's not expexted that a newspaper is going to provide much useful information for this kind of report and it might be a while (if ever) before anyone figures out what actually trigged the chain of events that caused the birds to die.

[signsoflife.livejournal.com]

It shows my bias that my first thought was that elevated trematode loads might suggest insecticide use that temporarily elevated mollusc populations in the area . . . but that's not actually likely. But it's hard to speculate without data; we don't even know if they're metazoan parasites. :P

Re: What species of birds?

[urbpan.livejournal.com]

They were grackles, pigeons, and house sparrows. (click my "mysterious deaths" tag to see my earlier post about it, where this is mentioned)

[ndozo.livejournal.com]

This was on: http://hisz.rsoe.hu/alertmap/woalert_read.php?id=9484&lang=eng
(Sorry for the long post)

Sheep Ranch resident Jackie Machado seemed to be living in a real-life horror film situation. Several dead pigeons started appearing on her property last week with no apparent cause. "When you find one or two birds, you think that it’s no big deal and that a cat probably got it,” Machado said. “But when you find 20, you start to worry." Machado grew concerned when new bodies started popping up daily. Machado said county departments gave her the runaround as she tried to figure things out for her family’s safety. "We don’t know if we’re exposing our family to something or what,” she said. “It’s been a bad week." The California Department of Fish and Game eventually took up the case and discovered evidence of a bird-specific disease - avian trichomoniasis. "It’s not transmissible to humans,” said Fish and Game veterinarian Pam Swift, based in Rancho Cordova. “Put on gloves, pick up the dead birds and dispose of them." Swift said the disease was most likely transferred among flocks of migrating pigeons through food and water sources. It can be identified by “cheesy ulcers and sores” on the bird’s beak. While the finding is preliminary, Swift said similar reports have surfaced in El Dorado and Placer counties as well. Specimens would be sent to a lab in Davis for further testing, she said. Although the response was consoling, Machado recalled days of confusion and frustration with little answers from county officials. “I called a lot of agencies and the attitude I got was, "I don’t know," Machado said. Machado contacted county Animal Services, the county’s farm advisor, the Public Health Department and even the state’s West Nile Virus hotline. All gave her a collective shrug. A representative from Animal Services said dead pigeons are “not on our radar,” and they deal more with domestic animals and cattle. Public Health Officer Dean Kelaita was aware of Machado’s issue, but said it didn’t warrant action from his department, which usually handles West Nile cases. “There aren’t very many diseases that will affect both birds and potentially humans,” he said.

"In this case, there wasn’t a lot of evidence that made us concerned over a potential to hurt humans as well.” It wasn’t the right time of year for West Nile, and other animal-to-human diseases, like rabies, are tracked through squirrels and other rodents, he said. Machado was eventually referred to a state department representative who requested she store a few dead pigeons in her refrigerator so they could be picked up. She and her husband also cut open a pigeon to look for signs of poison, per the advice of county officials. Flocks of pigeons and other birds frequently reside around Machado’s five-acre property in Sheep Ranch. Machado said she stopped walking her dogs out of fear of infecting them. According to Swift, there have not been reports of cross-contamination between birds and other domestic animals. Swift advised residents who find several dead pigeons with beak sores to dispose of them immediately and to also contact the West Nile Virus hotline at 1-877-968-2473 to make a report. While Machado was frustrated with the county’s response, she was now more at ease and could let her dogs loose on her property again.

[by-steph.livejournal.com]

In Houston, I lived by a bayou with a lot of Muscovy ducks. Long term residents of the area said that the Muscovy population would periodically crash due to disease. Over a few years the population would rebound, only to decline again after another epidemic.

[by-steph.livejournal.com]

Odd that he mentioned squirrels as a carrier of rabies. My limited training in wildlife rehabilitation mentioned that squirrels aren't very good vectors for the disease. Squirrels aren't usually robust enough to survive a mauling in order to pass the disease on to another victim. To work with squirrels, you didn't even have to get a rabies vaccine. You would have to with raccoons, foxes, and coyotes though.

[bellelvsbeast.livejournal.com]

Man sucks for the birds...I hope they find out how that happened!