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Mycoplasmal Conjunctivitis in Wild Songbirds: The Spread of a New Contagious Disease in a Mobile Host Population
The Cape Cod Connection has received a letter from Jim Cook, a fellow birder who is trying to spread the word about the outbreak of Mycoplasma gallisepticum among songbirds. For those of us who regularly feed birds in our yards, this report should be of importance. Please read the following letter.
My name is Jim Cook. For the past three years, as a bird feeder in Maryland, I have been following the outbreak of disease Mycoplasma gallisepticum (MG) among eastern House Finches and now American goldfinches. (Federal wildlife authorities informed me I was the first to call this new disease to their attention.) Some of you with access to America Online and the WLREHAB wildlife rehabilitators listserv will know me from my many postings on this subject, as I have passed on information learned from having remained in touch with many of the scientist and biologists closely working on the outbreak.
I am writing to alert all of you to a major report on this disease posted a week or so ago on the Centers for Disease Control "Emerging Infectious Diseases" journal's web site. I will attach the text of this article to this note, but in the event it gets lost or is unreadable, you can find the original article at the CDC/EID URL address:
http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/EID/vol3no1/fischer2.htm
Please note the original online version also contains a range map of the disease's spread, from the Cornell Lab's Finch Study data, which does not appear in the text version I am attaching. As the article is public domain, it may be circulate freely. Those of you with retail chains may wish to send copies to your individual stores. Be advised, it is my understanding the article will formally published in "hard copy" form the next issue of this journal and this online version is an "advanced" copy. I do not know if there is any press release planned for its formal publication, but it is not beyond reason that some of you may be approached by members of the media about it once the formal journal is copy issued.
The reason I am sending each of you this article is because, as people very interested in bird feeding, whether as wildlife educators, bird feeding store managers, or simply bird feeding "experts," or even humble backyard bird feeders such as myself, each of you needs to be aware of this article. One of its most important conclusions is that bird feeders are considered and major factor in the spread of this disease among finches and possibly other feeder song birds in the future. I am hoping, as such, all of those interested in bird feeding, from back yard birding enthusiasts, to retail feeder merchants, to feeder manufacturers, and wildlife naturalists and educators - each of us will begin to look more seriously at the issue of disease spread at bird feeders - and particularly this disease. (The article notes that the MG organism adapts very rapidly and for that reason may evade hosts immune systems, implying this disease may be around for a long time.)
Some of you, perhaps all of you in the Western US, may have never seen a finch with MG. The Cornell Finch Study Web Page has a fairly typical picture of what MG does to finches (however, the bird displayed there has its eyes open -- many look much worse). The Cornell Finch Study URL is http://www.ornith.cornell.edu/CS/HOFI/main.html
Finches afflicted with MG are an absolutely heartbreaking sight to see, as they hover, nearly blind, at ones feeders. Those of you who have seen them will understand why I have gotten so involved in this issue.
Those of you in the retail feeder industry might consider pooling your resources and funding research aimed at determining how MG is spread and how feeders may be designed or situated so as to minimize the spread of this disease. You may also wish to fund the publication of educational material to give to those experiencing an outbreak of this disease at their feeders. To the best of my knowledge, there remains no publicly available brochure or pamphlet on the subject of coping with MG at bird feeders. From my own observations and conversations, at least in the Eastern US and Canada now and very possibly moving to the Western areas of both countries in the immediate years to come, MG may be the single most likely wildlife disease the average person is going to come across. To find that there are no publications available on it - even three years since it began appearing, is a shame.
It is not my intention to sound alarmist about this or to generate any sort of panic among bird feeders. After all, people have been seeing swollen-eyed finches in the Eastern states for three years now and the sky hasn't fallen. But this is the first article I have seen in a professional journal where bird feeders were implicated as a major reason this disease spread so rapidly - and continues spreading. For that reason alone, as direct or indirect participants in the spread of this disease, I hope this article will prompt us all to ask - "is there anything we can do about it?"
Jim Cook
CmdrJaycee@aol.com
PS. FYI, I have already sent similar notes to this to a number of major birding and bird feeding retail chains.
PSS. I have absolutely no reason to think this was planned, and considering the time involved in such article's "peer review" process I am sure it was totally out of the authors' control in any case, but I suspect irony that this study is coming out during National Bird Feeding Month has probably not escaped many of you.
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