While I was at the Backyard Bird Shop today, buying premium sunflower chips for my tube feeder, I received an answer to my question about the bird dilemma.
At this point, five different ill or injured birds have come to my deck, all the same breed, and have either died there on my deck after a day or two – or, after I picked them up and put them on the railing – plummeted to the ground below rather than flying away.
At first I felt like this was an honor… The birds were so tame they allowed me to pet, and in some cases, hold them. I put out little bowls of food and water for them on the deck, hoping they would mend. But after each of them “died on me” after a day or two, I dreaded opening my door to the deck to see if yet another young bird was there on my deck, unable to truly fly, just hopping along. Of course I wondered if I was in some way contributing to their demise – I wondered if overcrowding at my feeders was an issue, thoroughly cleaned the feeders, etc.
I found out from the kind and knowledgeable staff at the bird store (many of their customers are asking the same questions I did) that my original instinct about the breed was correct – they are the pine siskin, and an epidemic has hit them this year. The numbers of pine siskin born last season was incredibly large compared to many years, and only the young ones are susceptible to aspergillosis, the most common fungal infection in birds caused by spores the fungus aspergilla fumigates.
According to information I gathered on-line at HotSpot for Birds, contributed by Hannis L. Stoddard III, DMV, this type of fungi grows readily in damp, dark conditions and is far less common in dry climates like the US southwest.
The good news is the birds are immune to this disorder after the age of about 18 months. So, we will not be losing our pine siskin population any time soon, as my father said has happened to the cottontail rabbit population in South Dakota, where I grew up on a farm.
Also, the bird store staff confirmed what sweet birds they are, when I mentioned how startled I was that they let me pet and even hold them!
Here’s to the pine siskin! Live and thrive! Thank you for your sweet and open temperament. I’m very fond of you.
J
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ReplyDeleteAw, so sad. When I was in college the first time around studying GIS and Natural Resources I found that viruses like this is nature's way of correcting over population in a species. I find this type of correction amazing. Without such corrections the entire population could die of starvation. I am further amazed that we humans who are capable of higher reasoning somehow think we are immune from this correction, or at the very least believe we can outsmart it.
ReplyDeleteThank you for sharing all you learned about this precious bird!