lineatus has been taking a break due to a confluence of banding season and family events. She is also mourning the loss of a dear friend so I thought I would "fill in" for her with this.
I first noticed it about a month ago. While I had a plethora of goldfinches, my usual gang of house finches was precious few.
I was puzzled, yet failed to be curious enough to hit Teh Google or make a few phone calls.
Now I feel guilty, wondering if I had acted sooner maybe a few could have been saved. Maybe I could have confined it, contained it, checked it.
It was when I noticed I was down to very few males and some of the females would just sit at the feeder and let me walk right up to them and talk to them that I knew it was very, very serious.
My finches had contracted mycoplasmal conjunctivitis.
House finches are native to the western U.S. They were so pretty that pet stores in the east started selling them. They became known as "Hollywood birds".
When pet shops stopped their illegal selling of wild birds, they released their meager stocks into the wild.
Because of that, the DNA pool was shallow and the existing population, although huge (est. 267 million - 1.4 billion) is inbred, making them likely candidates for opportunistic infection.
Mycoplasmal conjunctivitis is a respiratory disease caused by the M. conjunctivitis bacterium. While humans can get conjunctivitis (pink eye is viral), this form cannot be passed from diseased birds to people or other mammals.
There are 23 different strains of mycoplasma in both free range and domestic birds. Mycoplasmal gallisepticum is one of four that affect poultry and game birds and is the culprit behind the disease affecting finches and other passerines.
The finch variety of MG is something of a mystery, differing from that affecting poultry and game birds. We may never know the source.
The disease was first noted in house finches in 1994 in the greater Washington D.C. area. A volunteer-based birders reporting system was started at Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology to follow the geographic spread of the disease and morbidity/mortality rates of infected birds. It has since been discontinued due to lack of funding and difficulty with the program. You can still report infected birds through FeederWatch, however.
Outbreaks are more common in the fall and winter, falling to nearly 0 in May-June, the height of mating season. I'm not sure why my birds got infected at the height of summer.
Male finches appear to be more susceptible and I noticed the dearth of male house finches first in my backyard population but the females swiftly followed.
My goldfinches, on the other hand, seem to have been in a ladies first situation and I still have quite a few robust males about the place.
House finches, goldfinches, tufted titmice, chickadees, grosbeaks, siskins, starlings, and even blue jays have been seen with the disease. But the heaviest toll is still with the house finches and studies have shown that those that recover still carry the disease with no increase in immunity from it.
Crusty, swollen eye orbitals, sometimes oozing from reddened eyes, lethargy, confusion, and erratic flying are signs that birds are infected.
You may have noticed fewer fledglings or starving ones because mom was no longer around to care for them.
You may have more birds hitting windows or observe their difficulty and confusion trying to land on a tree branch.
While the disease can kill the birds on its own accord through respiratory distress/arrest, most die by flying into something because they couldn't see or become easy targets for predators. Some dehydrate and starve due to their inability to forage.
I've had a few kestrels around who very likely saw the finches as easy pickin's.
Most of the birds I noticed were in fairly early stages of the disease. Some white crust along the bottom of their eyes, lethargy, unkempt feathers and obvious vision issues.
A few were worse with swollen tissue around the eyes, some to the point of it appearing their eyes were swollen shut.
When I went onto my deck and found a fledgling sitting on one of the chairs, it's breathing clearly labored, my heart sank.
I wrapped him in a dish towel to keep him warm and calm and baby-talked, rubbing his head. He had no visible injuries but had likely crashed into one of the windows or the wall.
Every once in awhile he would stretch out his right wing like it hurt but it didn't appear to be broken. There was a little white crusting at the bottom of his eyes.
I tried desperately to get some water or food in him but he wouldn't open his beak -not even to call for his mom.
He weakened to the point he could no longer hold his head up so I propped the towel and cupped my hand underneath to support his head.
His breathing became increasingly labored and a paralysis set in, starting from the back end up. All I could do was provide comfort until, finally opening his beak, he gasped for air a few times and it was over.
The number one priority for anyone who has bird feeders is to keep them CLEAN.
If you have not seen any sick birds, they should be taken apart and cleaned in hot water with 10% bleach at least once a month. Use a bottle brush to clean in food ports or other tight spaces.
If you have seen sick birds, clean them in 10% bleach at least once a week. lineatus also suggested wiping down the ports and perches with an alcohol swab daily.
I did all of that but, of course, you are at the mercy of neighbors who may also be feeding birds and the fact that finches are naturally social and congregate together, thus spreading the disease.
Since I was going away for awhile, I decided it would be best to take the feeders down and get the birds to disperse.
I was so sad bringing them into the house. Because of my illness and frequent confinement, my peeps have become, well, my peeps! Watching the antics of my backyard denizens is a never ending soap opera.
I have a mockingbird that lines her fledglings up on the fence and then does everything she can to get me outside to see them and tell her how pretty they are.
I have a blue jay that wolf whistles at me.
I have a mating pair of cardinals on their 3rd year of residency and a nuthatch that will let me get within 2 feet.
The various finches, chickadees, and titmice all start singing and fill the tree when they see me putting out their food and they come to the window to yell at me if I don't.
So, I'll give it a little while, scrub everything down yet again, and my friends who haven't succumbed will return. But I feel guilty. I feel responsible.
While I know logically the odds that something I did or did not do caused conjunctivitis to spread in my resident finch population are nearly nil, a little part of me, as caretaker/parent/aficionado, will always feel like I should have acted sooner and that I could have done more.
Hopefully, the spring will herald in a new bawdy band of healthy house finches. The following photos are a sort of epitaph- shots from the past year or so from my deck. Some are healthy in these pics and some are showing signs but most, if not all, of these birds are now dead. I miss them.
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I never saw a wild thing sorry for itself. A small bird will drop frozen dead from a bough without ever having felt sorry for itself. - D. H. Lawrence
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