West Nile Virus Decimates Suburban Birds
Pastor Dale Morgan
May 16, 3:11 PM EDT
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West Nile Virus Decimates Suburban Birds*
By SETH BORENSTEIN
AP Science Writer
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Birds that once flourished in suburban skies,
including robins, bluebirds and crows, have been devastated by West Nile
virus, a study found.
Populations of seven species have had dramatic declines across the
continent since West Nile emerged in the United States in 1999,
according to a first-of-its-kind study. The research, to be published
Thursday by the journal Nature, compared 26 years of bird breeding
surveys to quantify what had been known anecdotally.
"We're seeing a serious impact," said study co-author Marm Kilpatrick, a
senior research scientist at the Consortium of Conservation Medicine in
New York.
West Nile virus, which is spread by mosquito bites, has infected 23,974
people in confirmed cases since 1999, killing 962, according to the
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
But the disease, primarily an avian virus, has been far deadlier for
birds. The death toll for crows and jays is easily in the hundreds of
thousands, based on the number dead bodies found and extrapolated for
what wasn't reported, Kilpatrick said.
It hit the seven species - American crow, blue jay, tufted titmouse,
American robin, house wren, chickadee and Eastern bluebird - hard enough
to be scientifically significant. Only the blue jay and house wren
bounced back, in 2005.
The hardest-hit species has been the American crow. Nationwide, about
one-third of crows have been killed by West Nile, said study lead author
Shannon LaDeau, a research scientist at the Smithsonian Migratory Bird
Center in Washington. The species was on the rise until 1999.
In some places, such as Maryland, crow loss was at 45 percent, and
around Baltimore and Washington, 90 percent was gone, LaDeau said.
While crows are scavengers and often disliked, they play a key role in
nature by cleaning up animal carcasses, LaDeau noted. Researchers will
next look into what species benefit from the disappearance of crows.
Researchers noted the die-offs came in patches, with many in some places
and none in others. Maryland appeared to be the epicenter of bird
deaths, though that was partly because the data were not as good from
New York, where the virus first hit, LaDeau said.
Chickadees, Eastern bluebirds and robins in Maryland were 68 percent, 52
percent, and 32 percent below expected levels in 2005. Tufted titmouse
populations in Illinois were one-third of what they were expected to be.
"It tends to be more suburban areas. Some of the common backyard species
including the blue jays, the robins, the chickadees have suffered
significant declines," LaDeau said. "That heavily packed urban corridor
is a bad place to be a bird. The reason for that is that the mosquito
prefers human landscape. They do very well in suburbia."
The birds act as an early warning system for humans, said Wesley
Hochachka, assistant director of bird population studies at Cornell Lab
of Ornithology.
"If you start seeing crows dying and dying in numbers, that means there
could be a human outbreak," said Hochachka, who was not involved with
the study.
The researchers looked at 20 species that were regularly counted each
breeding season and found that populations of 13 species were not down
because of West Nile. Biologists say they have seen other species with
many deaths, including owls, hawks, sage grouse and yellow-billed
magpies, but there are no breeding surveys to quantify how bad the
problem has been.
Although entire small clusters of crows were "wiped out by West Nile
virus in a single season," Greg Butcher, director of bird conservation
at the National Audubon Society, remained hopeful.
"All of those (bird populations) have the capacity to rebound," he said.
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On the Net:
Nature: http://www.nature.com
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention maps and figures on human
cases of West Nile virus:
http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/dvbid/westnile/surv&control.htm surveillance