It’s been cold out there and we're feeding our visiting backyard wild birds a lot more to deal with it!
Chill, disease killing waterfowl
By Carrie Peyton Dahlberg - Bee Staff Writer
Published 12:00 am PST Tuesday, January 16, 2007
With icy ponds forcing ducks and geese to crowd closer and closer together, wildlife refuge managers are continuing the grim task of collecting the dead in an effort to slow an outbreak of avian cholera.
The bacterial disease has killed more than 1,500 birds so far at the Butte Sink section of the Sacramento National Wildlife Refuge complex, said Mike Carpenter, one of the wildlife biologists who's been scooping the dead birds from ponds and shorelines.
An additional 214 were collected Sunday, on a refuge boat that sometimes broke through a half-inch-thick layer of ice on its rounds, Carpenter said.
A few birds were saved for testing, but most went into an incinerator: little gray and black coots, ruddy ducks streaked with vivid green, and wigeons, a compact duck with male breeding plumage that turns russet and is set off by a blue beak.
"I don't like picking up dead birds," said Carpenter, but "you're saving lots of birds by staying on top of the disease."
Fueled by cold, crowding and low water levels, cholera can fell tens of thousands of birds in a bad winter. This year's episode, while not unusual in cold weather, is one of the harsh realities facing migratory waterfowl.
"I've actually seen birds drop out of the sky from avian cholera," said Bob McLandress, president of California Waterfowl Association, whose graduate work included studying the disease. "All of a sudden a bird will fall down, and within 20 minutes it's stone dead."
