LARGO said:
Might sound foolish but I need help on this one.
What is the proper agency & contact to report dead birds to?
I suppose one would also have to supply a specimen to said agency?
I have in my immediate area an unusual # of birds found dead.
Mostly blackbirds but I find it kind of weird.
Given the concern about H5-N1 Avian Influenza virus, as well as West Nile virus, any unesxdpected bird die-off should definitely be reported to the
County or State Health Department.
One of the first things they will do in investigation of your report (after collecting a representative sample of the bird carcasses in question) will be to arrive at an estimate of number of dead birds and the size of the population from which the dead birds came.
I recall an episode in which,over the period of a week or 10 days, the daily
toll of dead grackles being found each morning in a neighborhood in a medium- sized midwewstern city rose from about 50 to over 200/day.
Sounded alarming and certainly deserved investigation. We found that almost 75% of the dead grackles were infected with a helminth (worm) parasite in the meninges and brain. At first blush that would seem to explain most of the deaths. But... as it happens, about 75% to 80% of normal grackles summering in the mid-latitudes of the US harbour this parasite with no ill effects.
While collecting dead birds we discovered that the real complaint of the residents of the neighborhood in which the dead birds were found was that "...thousands and thousands..." of grackles were roosting in trees on nearby city/County land. We showed up before dawn the next day and found that the gracle roost population was actually in the vicinity of three hundred thousand to three hundred and fifty thousand - that's right, - 300,000 to 350,000 grackles. (They tend to congregate in larger and larger flocks as summer wanes and migration is more imminent).
New perspective time! O.K., out of a population of three hundred thousand of damned near any species a daily mortality of a few hundred individuals suggests that the overall health and sustainability of the population is excellent.
Post-mortem exams on close to 100 dead grackles revealed, besides the fascinating but insignificant brain/meningeal worms, a variety of causes of death, none of which posed any health threats to either the grackle or local human populations.
The size of the roost, however, was of concern to the Health Department because of the large amount of grackle guano that was accumulating ( and had accumulated at the same site in previous years ... don't ask me why they hadn't reported the bad smell before this...?) Such accumulations of bird poop can provide a fertile nutrient source for several mycotic/fungal organisms that can cause human illness and thus, indeed, be of public health significance. The city, in recognition of the fact that large numbers of grackles had roosted there for many years, elected to cut down the roost trees. Last I heard (several years later), the pre-migration aggregation of grackles decided to roost elsewhere in parts unknown.
I said all that to emphasize that it's not unusual for a die-off of some species of wildlife to be due to some cause or causes other than the one or ones initially feared - but they do need to be investigated to find out!
I would suspect that, with a "blackbird" population in mid to late June being one that recently came up from the south, rather than down from the north, it's unlikely that they've been exposed tp H5-N1 avian flu. West Nile virus, however, is a reasonable possibility.
I'll be curious to hear what comes of this episode.
Best t'y'all,
Dave
