Donna, My guess is that the bird has salmonellosis. Unfortunately, I think that every year that there is a major redpoll irruption, some birds start dying of salmonellosis: we see redpolls that are listless, sitting for long periods of time motionless and with their feathers puffed up enormously...and then they die and drop to the ground. To the best of my knowledge, there is nothing that can be done about an individual sick redpoll in that case. However, I also think that this means that you should start thinking about preventative measures like:
- If you handle a sick redpoll, wash your hands very thoroughly (same advice as for the flu) afterwards. - If you have a pet that could eat dead or dying birds, do what you can to minimize the potential for pet and bird coming into contact for your pet's sake. - You also have to decide on the extent to which you want to try to minimize spread of the pathogen, like moving feeders to a different location away from contaminated ground, adding new feeders or spacing existing feeders further apart to lower the rates of contact between birds, or as an extreme case taking your feeders down for a while to disperse the birds that are now visiting. Regarding this last item, I'm not suggesting that the redpoll contracted the disease at your feeders: redpolls are gregarious, and so they are a species that makes it easy for pathogens to spread. Also, as I wrote, redpoll irruptions and salmonella outbreaks seem to go hand in hand, so while disease and death are unfortunate, your finding a sick bird is unfortunately not unexpected. Wesley Hochachka From: bounce-72596748-3494...@list.cornell.edu [mailto:bounce-72596748-3494...@list.cornell.edu] On Behalf Of Donna Scott Sent: Friday, January 18, 2013 10:32 AM To: CAYUGABIRDS-L Subject: [cayugabirds-l] sick Redpoll For several days, I have seen a Redpoll that seems lethargic and with its feathers all puffed out. It eats a lot, but seems not to have the energy to fly around or up off the ground very much. This morning, to rescue it from possible capture by my bird-seed-eating dog, who was out with me while I was filling feeders, I caught the bird in my hand and took it up to the deck that is one story off the ground and set it down in a safe place. It flew away from where I put it and since I have company, I was not able to keep track of it after that. Its butt feathers are a yellow color, so it has some "bird diarrhea" perhaps. Any advice? Donna L. Scott 535 Lansing Station Road Lansing, NY 14882 d...@cornell.edu<mailto:d...@cornell.edu> -- Cayugabirds-L List Info: Welcome and Basics<http://www.northeastbirding.com/CayugabirdsWELCOME> Rules and Information<http://www.northeastbirding.com/CayugabirdsRULES> Subscribe, Configuration and Leave<http://www.northeastbirding.com/CayugabirdsSubscribeConfigurationLeave.htm> Archives: The Mail Archive<http://www.mail-archive.com/cayugabirds-l@cornell.edu/maillist.html> Surfbirds<http://www.surfbirds.com/birdingmail/Group/Cayugabirds> BirdingOnThe.Net<http://birdingonthe.net/mailinglists/CAYU.html> Please submit your observations to eBird<http://ebird.org/content/ebird/>! -- -- Cayugabirds-L List Info: http://www.NortheastBirding.com/CayugabirdsWELCOME http://www.NortheastBirding.com/CayugabirdsRULES http://www.NortheastBirding.com/CayugabirdsSubscribeConfigurationLeave.htm ARCHIVES: 1) http://www.mail-archive.com/cayugabirds-l@cornell.edu/maillist.html 2) http://www.surfbirds.com/birdingmail/Group/Cayugabirds 3) http://birdingonthe.net/mailinglists/CAYU.html Please submit your observations to eBird: http://ebird.org/content/ebird/ --
