Tom Foote, always focused on raptors, sez:

>Well, I found a squib in the local paper today about deformed "birds of
>prey"..seems 8 birds were found last summer with with crossed bills or
>missing eyes or both. they were brought to Wildlife Images, a rehab
>center in Grants Pass,OR. I don't know if this is old stuff, but I
>wondered about it. Anybody know what birds these were, or anything about
>the reasons/causes of the deformities?

The USFS people have been quoted as saying "due to mutations", and
it is unusual because they were all found in a small area.

They went on to say that exposure to PCBs is known to cause crossed
bills, but didn't explain how this hint at a chemically-caused
development defect jives with the mutation explanation.

Unless they think the crossed bill is caused by a mutation in
either the egg or sperm of one of the parents.

As you can see, my paper's blurb wasn't much more informative than
yours...

-Don Baccus-