Sick Birds?

 

ChatGPT  Image of house finch
with conjunctivitis

If you feed birds or provide water, at some point, you are going to see sick birds. 

A fellow birder mentioned this week she had some house finches with conjunctivitis, so had removed her feeders for a time, which is exactly what you should do.

How do you know you have sick birds? There are two primary diseases our birds get in this area that are very contagious between birds. 

The first is conjunctivitis. This is prevalent in house finches (House Finch Eye Disease), but can be spread to other songbirds, such as gold finches, purple finches, and occasionally, grosbeaks.. If you are looking at your birds and they have crusty, runny eyes, this is conjunctivitis. Birds can't see well and the disease can cause blindness, if the bird isn't predated first.  The bacterium that causes this disease is spread by direct contact between birds or contaminated surfaces (such as feeders). This disease can be treated fairly easily with the right medication. If you can catch the affected bird, you can take it to Wild Bird Rescue.

Another disease I haven't seen for some time primarily infects doves. You'll have doves sitting on your feeders just gorging themselves, but the bird will waste away because they can't swallow the food. You may notice the birds because it will stay fluffed up like it's cold. Trichomoniasis can be transmitted to birds of prey when the bird eats the dove. Infected birds starve or suffocate. This disease is not easily treatable and generally, birds are immediately put down because the disease spreads so easily.

What you can do. Keep your feeders and bird baths clean as a preventive measure. If you have seen sick birds, immediately take down your feeders and empty your bird bath. Thoroughly clean them, using a 1:10 bleach solution. Leave them down for at least 10 days. Why? You are basically allowing the sick birds in your area to die off to stop the spread of disease. If you put your feeders/bird baths back in operation too soon, any infected birds will once again contaminate your feeders and continue to spread the disease.

These diseases do not infect people.

A Typical August Morning

Least sandpiper
Clinton & Charles Robertson from RAF Lakenheath, UK & San Marcos, TX, USA
& UK, CC BY-SA 2.0  via Wikimedia Commons

The bird outing at Lake Arrowhead State Park last Saturday was typical for August. Hot, and not a lot of birds. However, since several attendees were Texas Master Naturalists, we still saw some interesting critters, especially spiders and insects of various types.

Fall shorebird migration has begun, with some least sandpipers foraging along the shoreline. Next month should be better. Least sandpipers are one of what is referred to as "peeps", the very smallest and the hardest to identify of sandpipers. However, the least sandpiper is the easiest of the peeps to ID. If you look at the picture, you can see that the sandpiper has a black bill and yellow legs. The other peeps have a black bill and black legs. It can sometimes be difficult to see the color of the legs, depending upon the light (and the legs are teeny, tiny). It is easiest to tell by getting a picture and then enlarging it on your computer when you get home.

I usually get to the park early on bird outing days, so I can scope out the route to see if I want to make any adjustments. The birds in August are quiet. I did get an excellent view of a male painted bunting sitting on a bare branch at the top of a tree. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to find one once everyone else arrived. Usually they are singing all over the park.

It was a decent morning for egrets/herons.

Birds seen/heard included great egret, snowy egret, cattle egret, great blue heron, green heron, Canada goose, killdeer, least sandpiper, mourning dove, ladder-backed woodpecker, northern cardinal, cliff swallow,  Carolina chickadee, Carolina wren, red-winged blackbird, and great-tailed grackle.

It should be a much better outing next month.

Good birding!

Lake Arrowhead Bird Outing Saturday

Canada geese enjoying the swim area
at LASP

The monthly bird outing at Lake Arrowhead State Park is scheduled for 8:00 AM on Saturday, August 9. We meet in the parking lot adjacent to the Admin Building (between the swim beach and the fishing pier).

The hike is really a leisurely stroll of about a mile. It is level and (mostly) paved. For those with mobility issues, there is a paved surface adjacent to the short portion where we usually cut across the grass, so it is easy enough to stay on the pavement the entire route. How long we spend depends on the birds we see and the heat. Generally, we spend 1 - 1.5 hours walking the mile.

This outing is sponsored by the Rolling Plains Chapter Texas Master Naturalist. Therefore, although birds are the primary focus of the hike, butterflies, spiders, plants, and any other interesting thing we come across are likely to be observed, discussed, and photographed.

The outing is open to anyone. Bring the kids, if you like. You don't need any experience or knowledge about the birds--this is an excellent way to get started with birdwatching. 

It's a good idea to put on sunscreen and to wear a hat. Bring water and binoculars. 

Granted, August is not the best month of the year for birds in our area, but Fall migration has started, so we may see some shorebirds.

There is a park entry fee of $4/person. Since the hike starts at the same time the ranger station opens, be prepared to stop at the self-pay station. Come a little early and bring correct change.

Good birding!

Listing

Field list

Bird people are notorious for their lists. Many keep all kinds of lists. The most significant list is their life list. As you might guess, a life list is a list of every bird you have seen in your lifetime, usually with the date and place you identified the bird first.

Before the advent of computers, everyone kept their life list on paper. Not ideal. I have lost my life list twice. Once you lose the documentation, you can't remember every bird you have seen, let alone when and where. Now, we have eBird, which protects your list. But I know I have seen a LOT of birds that are not on my current list, especially from the years I spent in Europe. I still have hope that I come across the list in one of the boxes in the garage that haven't been unpacked since our last move.

eBird does have a phone app. I have it on my phone, but I don't use it. It would make sense to do so, since I have to take my field notes and enter them into eBird when I get home, which means I have a lot of checklists that I haven't entered. And, as you can see in the photo, my field list is a little messy. I am working on entering some today.

If you would like to use eBird, you might consider taking the Cornell University Lab of Ornithology Bird Academy course eBird Essentials. It's free. There's a lot of things you can do with eBird besides keeping your lists.

In addition to life lists, birders keep yard lists, state lists, county lists, patch lists, etc. There is a Texas Century Club to encourage birders to find 100 birds in 100 counties in Texas (for those not familiar with Texas, we have 254 counties). There are several counties in Texas that are sparsely populated and bird records were few. The Century Club, and eBird, have greatly improved our knowledge of bird ranges. 

I can recall many years ago, when I would update a sighting in Wichita County, I would get calls from the people who try to help keep eBird accurate, questioning my entry since the bird wasn't supposed to be here or not at that time or in those numbers. Since I don't carry a camera, I don't take a lot of photos to prove I saw what I saw. Fortunately, there are a lot of people who do carry cameras and provide photographic evidence, and now there is plenty of documentation that the birds are in our area, which has made challenges rare.

I do know (a very few) birders who do not list. They feel keeping lists detracts from the experience of observing the birds. And I get that. Some people do seem to just want to tick off a bird on their list and not spend any time enjoying the bird. But I don't think that's true of most.

Truly, the best thing about lists is the memories they bring back. When I look at sightings, I can often remember the place, the people I was with, or some other fact about the day. I was on a hike in Copper Breaks State Park this weekend, and one of the people I was with stopped in the middle of a trail and said, "It was at this exact spot that I heard a canyon wren..." I often stop at places I have seen a special bird just to remember how I felt at the time.

To list or not to list...it's a question only you can answer for yourself.

Good birding!