Keeping Things Clean
If you're going to provide a feeding station where birds will gather in large numbers to a single location, which they normally don't do in the wild, you should also assume responsibility for doing your best to make sure that you're not going to be contributing to illness or disease. If a sick or diseased bird comes to your platform feeder and poops on the seed, the next bird that comes could become infected. Obviously you can't go clean your feeders between each bird that visits, but you can take reasonable steps to avoid the spread of disease. This isn't exciting stuff, like putting out a new suet feeder and seeing a downy show up five minutes later. There's nothing exciting about scrubbing a feeder covered with bird poop when the weather is gloomy and you'd rather be curled up underneath the afghan your mother knitted you for your birthday, reading a good book and watching the birds through the window.
While maintaining a clean feeding station is the un-glamorous side of backyard feeding, but it is critically important. There are several highly contagious avian diseases that can strike feeder birds, including avian pox and house finch conjunctivitis.
House finch conjunctivitis (Mycoplasmal conjunctivitis), first noticed in the winter of 1993-1994, is mostly limited to the eastern United States, although it has been moving west and at a discouragingly pace. The disease, caused by a bacterium called Mycoplasma gallisepticum, causes the birds eyes to fill with infected matter, and is extremely contagious. Although the disease itself is not usually fatal, it can cause the birds to go blind, and as a result they can die from exposure, starvation or predation. Unfortunately, researchers have not been able to pinpoint exactly how the disease is spread, whether by contact with feces from the infected bird or contact with the infected matter itself. They also don t know why the disease is limited, so far, to house finches and possibly a few American goldfinches and purple finches, when many other species may share the same feeders. Researchers do believe that the disease began on commercial poultry farms, although why house finches were the species to have the bad luck of contracting the disease is still a mystery. Keeping a clean feeding station may help prevent the spread of the disease, although the researchers can't even tell us that for certain.
The Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology, along with many other avian researchers, is tracking the disease and researching both the cause and the potential for treatment. If you believe you have birds at your feeders with house finch conjunctivitis, please report them to the Lab by calling (607) 254-2446 or logging onto their website at http://birds.cornell.edu/hofi.
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