Migrating Birds Spread Diseases

Posted by Rosemary Drisdelle Jul 2, 2006

Are you interested in encouraging more birds to visit your property? Read my recent articles, Creating Shelter for Birds and Hang a Nesting Box for Birds.

Just about any morning in spring and summer, I can look out my kitchen window and see American Robins running about in the back of the house, looking for worms and other goodies. Even five years ago, this would have been an entirely gratifying scene - I wouldn't have perceived a robin or any other bird as being any threat to me whatsoever. Well, times have changed. Now I know birds spread disease.

Suddenly, we are repeatedly getting the message that dangerous diseases are spreading from country to country, across oceans, and around the globe. Lyme disease used to be concentrated in the northeastern United States, then it began to spread. In the last few years it has come to Nova Scotia: birds brought it here. Suddenly it doesn't seem so wonderful that we live on a major bird migration route.

West Nile probably came to New York with a bird, then it began to spread. Birds flying hither and thither are spreading it to mosquitoes and mosquitoes are spreading it to people all over the continent. Surprisingly, my friend the American Robin may be the major culprit.

And then there's avian flu. Hardly a day goes by that we don't hear something about it in the news. The world is bracing for a flu pandemic; avian flu may be the virus that's going to cause it. Bird's are carrying the virus, spreading it to new birds, and maybe even bringing it to a duck pond near you. No one knows whether it will mutate into a flu strain that is easily passed from person to person. We all hope it won't.

One thing's for sure, the American Robins will continue to come to my yard and I'll just have to get used to wearing bug spray. I'd rather that, anyway, than do without the robins.

In my next few articles, I'll explore the parts that birds have to play in these three "new" diseases: Lyme disease, West Nile fever, and avian flu.