I hope the Cornell Lab folks won't mind my mentioning this... Years ago, I
visited them and talked with them quite a bit about the eBird project, of which
I'm a big fan. At some point we also shifted to my own worries about possible
pesticide poisoning incidents affecting birds, and how modern technology could
be used to help. Years ago there was a wildlife pesticide poisoning hotline,
but I believe it was discontinued way back. The Cornell guys said they had
thought about this too and even conceived of an application that they with
morbid humor called "D-bird", but had not had resources to pursue.
Maybe in our modern email, Web, Twitter, Facebook, etc.age we could find "free"
ways to track possible incidents so that experts could note possible patterns
and perhaps begin to correlate them with possible causes... I sure know that
there's a lot more I can do now to map, photograph, etc. than I imagined 20
years ago.
Cheers,
Steve, Arlington
(I'm glad to be able to report that all my local Catbirds seem to be fine. I
have noticed that we have a Northern Cardinal that seems to be singing in a new
dialect with a really cool trill in the song.)
-----Original Message-----
From: Paula Sullivan <paula.sullivan2@xxxxxxxxxxx>
To: VA-BIRD <va-bird@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Thu, Jul 15, 2010 9:15 pm
Subject: Re: [Va-bird] Dying Catbirds
I, too, found a Catbird in my yard dead of a mysterious cause. It was about
9-10
days ago. It was uninjured and intact and not under a window. I am providing no
food, only water, in my yard at the moment. I use no pesticides, but one of my
adjacent neighbors had a lawn service application recently. I find this very
strange. Perhaps, if others on this list report similar incidents of dead birds
of any species in their yards or on birding trails, some pattern might emerge
that could suggest a cause.
Paula Sullivan
Alexandria
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