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Scientists Still Searching for the Pathogen Behind the East's Songbird Epidemic
In a new report, experts ruled out a range of causes, but they still recommend taking down feeders until the source of the disease is identified.
By Joanna Thompson
Intern, Audubon Magazine
July 08, 2021
Christine Casey shipped the first bird carcasses from Kentucky to Georgia in early June. ... The week before, an alarmed wildlife researcher had reached out to her. “They started noticing an increased number of these birds coming in with crusty eyes,” says Casey, a wildlife veterinarian with the Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources. Despite the rehabber’s best efforts, the sick birds kept dying. Even more worrisome, they all fit a similar demographic: mostly young Blue Jays, Common Grackles, European Starlings, and American Robins. It was a distressing pattern, and one that Casey recognized.
For two months, a mysterious bird disease had been rippling across parts of the Mid-Atlantic and Southeastern United States. Now, it had apparently reared its head in Kentucky. Casey quickly asked for samples to ship to the Southeastern Cooperative Wildlife Disease Study (SCWDS) in Athens, Georgia.
In April, scores of birds in the greater Washington, D.C., area began displaying strange symptoms. Their eyes were swollen and crusty; some became disoriented, started twitching, and died. “They were having a hard time seeing,” says Nicole Nemeth of the SCWDS. “Sometimes they don’t seem to be able to use their hind legs.”
By the end of May, similar reports were rolling in from across Maryland, West Virginia and Virginia. By June, sick birds had turned up in Delaware, New Jersey, Ohio, Tennessee, Florida, Indiana, and Pennsylvania, according to the U.S. Geological Survey Wildlife Health Information Sharing Partnership. To date, thousands of sick and dying birds have been reported to SCWDS and other wildlife disease centers in nearby states. Casey’s department alone has gotten more than 1,200 calls since that first sample.
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