\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\nThe warts on the eye of this finch completely blinded it on that side but it was simply amazing how well it compensated for the affliction.\u00a0 It flew and even landed normally but it was obvious that it was blind on the right side because I could walk right up to it until it turned its head.\u00a0<\/p>\n
I\u00a0photographed all three of these birds within a 15 minute span so I knew there was a serious problem in my neighborhood and after my visit to the vertebrate disease specialist and some further research I realized that bird feeders in my neighborhood (there were many of them, including mine)\u00a0may have contributed to this disease outbreak.\u00a0 In order to prevent the spread of this disease experts recommend keeping feeders clean and regularly washed with a 10% bleach solution.<\/p>\n
It’s my gut feeling that backyard feeders have a more positive effect\u00a0on bird populations\u00a0(by far) than any negatives caused by the occasional spread of disease that may be enabled by close contact with lots of birds at feeders.\u00a0 That said,\u00a0preparing this post has reminded me once again just how important it is to keep my feeder clean!<\/p>\n
Ron\u00a0<\/p>\n
***Note:<\/strong>\u00a0 My apologies for the relatively poor quality of these photos (processing, composition etc).\u00a0 They were taken and processed when I was mostly lacking in photography and processing skills and sadly I must have deleted the original files.\u00a0<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Several years ago when I was new to bird photography I would often practice photographing the several species of birds that would come to my back yard feeder in order to improve my skills.\u00a0 Later that summer I began to notice birds with deformities, especially\u00a0on or near their bills, eyes, legs and feet.\u00a0 At first I thought they were some kind of tumors but on the morning I took these shots I saw three birds\u00a0(two\u00a0House Finches and one Mourning Dove)\u00a0that were affected so I became alarmed and took the photos to the vertebrate disease specialist at Division of Wildlife Resources here in Salt Lake City.\u00a0 The diagnosis was avian pox. Mourning Dove with avian pox growths on bill \u00a0 Avian pox is a serious disease of many species of birds caused by several strains of avipoxvirus.\u00a0 The most common form, cutaneous pox, causes wart-like growths around eyes, beak, legs or any unfeathered\u00a0skin.\u00a0 Those warts may interfere with feeding, sight, breathing or\u00a0perching.\u00a0 Affected birds often become emaciated due to the inability to feed.\u00a0 Avian pox causes significant mortality in infected birds but they often recover as long as they’re able to feed.\u00a0 There is no evidence that avipoxvirus affects humans.\u00a0 \u00a0Same bird, right side view \u00a0 Birds become infected with the virus through direct physical contact with infected birds, ingestion of food or water contaminated by other infected birds or through contact with contaminated surfaces – especially at bird feeders and perches.\u00a0 The virus enters through skin surfaces that have become abraded…<\/p>\n
Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[334,8],"tags":[650,654,652,651,655,656,653],"class_list":["post-4520","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-birds","category-ecology-and-environment","tag-avian-pox","tag-avipoxvirus","tag-bird-feeder","tag-disease","tag-house-finch","tag-mourning-dove","tag-warts"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-1aU","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4520","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4520"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4520\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4520"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4520"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4520"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"mourning-dove-7484\"](\"http:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/02\/mourning-dove-7484.jpg\" "\\"mourning-dove-7484\\"")
<\/a><\/p>\n