About that Goldfinch

On February 27, a sick goldfinch I'd been watching for a week or more finally became blind enough to catch. Her eyes had sealed all but shut. I walked up on her blind side, and caught her in my hand as she sat on the platform feeder.  Here's how she looked from above, her eyes so swollen by Mycoplasma  infection that her entire head looked weird and big. This is called house finch disease, because house finches are the primary vector. They first caught it in the early 1990's from our domestic chickens, and have little resistance to it. And now house finches have spread it to more than 35 species of wild birds. I like house finches. Nice little birds. I hate house finch disease. 

It's a painful thing, as you can see from her swollen red eyelids. 

She sat, quiet and still and mute. The first thing to do was mix up some tylosin tartrate (Tylan), an antibiotic effective against Mycoplasma spp. , which I get from my veterinarian. I held her in my hand as I administered that solution, drop by drop. Birds with house finch disease are very thirsty, and spend lots of time sitting on bird baths, which of course allows them to infect lots of other birds. I wanted to get this bird out of the mix at my feeder, so I caught her and put her in a small plastic Critter Keeper with a couple of small crocks of hulled sunflower seed and medicated water. By that evening, her eyes had opened enough so she could see me! It always feels like a miracle that Tylan works that fast. But she had a long way to go. To clear her system of the germ, I'd have to medicate her for three weeks. 

But here's the good part. Once she could see, I could move her into a large cage. Then, all I had to do was keep her in fresh Tylan-medicated water and food, and leave her the heck alone. The healing was up to her. 

Here she was only a week later. Understand: she wasn't always this agitated. This behavior is elicited by my entering the room and making a video. She was perfectly calm until she saw me! I was the monster who caught her and made her drink medicine.

By March 12, she was looking and acting ever so much better.

She'd had two weeks of treatment when I had to leave to speak at the Michigan Bluebird Festival. I left her in the loving care of my neighbor, Martha J., who is a bird whisperer. When I saw her last, canary babies had just hatched in two nests in her bird room! Martha kept my goldfinch isolated in a back room for almost a week, until I got back with Phoebe in tow. I felt confident leaving the wild bird with Martha, because she'd been medicated for two weeks and was asymptomatic, and Martha was careful about containment. I'm very grateful she could step in. Thank you SO much, Martha!!  It's really hard to do wildlife rehab when you travel for work.

Only one day to go until release time! I put her in the basement because Liam came home for a few days to see us, and I couldn't use his bedroom as a finch sanctuary any more. She's sharing space with an enormous geranium called Frank Headley, one of three huge mother plants I have kept over the winter. Ain't it gorgeous? A semi-dwarf zonal geranium developed in the U.K. in 1957. I adore it and plan to propagate it very soon. 

Finally, March 20 came. I love this little release video Phoebe made. Goldfinches don't stop to say thanks and goodbye. They just GO. 

May this bird be the only sick one I treat this spring. There's an element of luck to it, but more to the point, I'm not using tube feeders--only port-free mesh cylinders and small platform feeders. Everything is covered by hanging acrylic domes that keep droppings from falling into the food. 

I'm feeding sunflower hearts, safflower, and peanuts both in and out of shell in a small gray hanging platform feeder (behind the cylindrical peanut feeder), and suet and black oil sunflower hang from the other two hooks.

I just ran outside to shoot these photos. Brrr!! It's 56 and incredibly blustery. Gusts up to 39 mph make it feel like about 40 degrees out there! This is a somewhat better look at the small platform feeder in the foreground. I love this one because the birds tend to perch on the rim to feed, butts over the ground, and don't crap into their food. Good feeder hygiene is all about controlling poop.  And I don't use tube feeders because goopy sick bird eyes rub against the ports. So think about that. If you've got disease at your feeders, your first best step is to discontinue using tube feeders. Next, stop feeding when the weather is reliably warm. If you feed all summer long, you'll probably wind up feeding familes of house finches, who will happily breed nearby, producing multiple broods. Yay! you'll have even more disease vectors for your feeding program. See the connection?

My hanging system is the Denali Squirrel Stopper with four hooks, made by JCS Wildlife.

I save SO much money on seed now that the squirrels can't make it up the pole! The sliding baffle is very effective, as long as they can't leap from a nearby tree--which they sometimes manage to do.

Thought you'd appreciate some birdfeeding tips from someone who's been at it since she was about 10. Hard-won experience has led me to the conclusions I state here. Farewell, little goldfinch, and try to stay out of trouble now.

Another Little Patient

She was blind, or very nearly so, and I'd been watching her for a couple of weeks, waiting for the moment when she'd be so debilitated she gave up and sat on the ground. That moment came on a brutally cold morning after a snowy night. As I went to fill the feeders, there she sat, quietly on the snow at the base of a birch. She had given up.

I have no photos of the moment, but this is what she looked like--her eyes pasted shut on both sides.

This poor little creature has taken a sunflower heart from the feeder, and brought it up to the chamaecyparis just outside my studio window to process it. She's too weak to compete at the bustling feeders.

 

 She can see just enough through one slitted eye to avoid capture. Her time will come. I hope I'm there when it does.

What's felling these birds is Mycoplasma, a dread infection better known as house finch disease. And we have house finches to thank for introducing it into the general population of native species. Not their fault--we brought them to the East back in the dark ages, when keeping wild birds in cages was an accepted practice. And when they were released, a tiny founder population of perhaps a hundred birds escaping their crate at a New York airport, they bred and bred. But they were inbred, and they had no natural resistance to the germs they found here. And so it began.

Now, Mycoplasma stalks more than a dozen species, and the list is growing--everything from goldfinches to blue jays.

This bird was incredibly lucky to be picked up by somebody with a $75 bottle of an antibiotic called Tylan, and the resolve to cure her.

She would live in a roomy cage in my bat/bird room for the next three weeks, drinking water laced with bitter Tylan and sweetened with Stevia. :) It helps. 

She hated being caged.

Most of the time she looked like this

but every once in awhile I could sneak into the corner with my telephoto and hope to capture her at rest. Yes, her tail is a mess thanks to bashing it against the wires. Ideally, she should be kept in a nylon, soft-sided cage. I'll get there. Still hobbling along with my archaic old equipment. Trying to do no harm, sometimes failing. Believe it or not, I was able to preen it back into near- perfect shape when I finally caught her for release. No feathers were broken; they were just mussed.

She pigged out on sunflower chips and drank copious amounts of Tylan/Stevia water. Good girl.




For some reason, Blogger gags on my videos. I'll post one, and it's there. Post another, and the first one disappears. Trying to post two at once is nearly impossible. I'll beat my head against Blogger's wall for hours, trying to get these videos to take.

Trying again, after both vanished. Yep. Soon as I get one posted, the other vanishes. Man, that's frustrating. I'm gonna post this quick while they're still both visible. Thought you'd be lifted up, as I am, by the little perchicoree! she voices as I open my hand. She did say thank you. :)



I'm speaking twicet at Wings of Winter Festival, Klamath Falls, OR, this coming weekend, Feb. 15-16 2019! Talking about a snowy owl's crazy journey on Friday, and about baby birds on Saturday. I cannot WAIT. Haven't been anywhere for months. And the birding there is off the hook fabulous! Come see me! See left sidebar of this blog for details!