Tuesday's New York Times (12/12/95) had a story in the its Science
Times section on the conjunctivitis epidemic that is killing House Finches.
The diesease has spreadly rapidly from the Northeast to the South and
Midwest.
The disease is a new strain of a well-known bacterium, Mycoplasma
gallisepticum, that affects farm poultry. The disease causes the bird's
eyes to swell, ooze and crust over. While the infection is not deadly,
the birds are blinded and either starve or fall prey to a predator. The
articles quotes Dr. George Kollias, a wildlife vet with Cornell, as
recommending against attempting to treat infected finch: "The problem
with this organism is that clinical signs will disappear and the bird
will appear healthy, but it can still spread the infection if it ios
released back into the wild.
The disease is not affecting other common feeder birds. Kollias
inoculated the bacteria directly into the eye membrane of other
passerines and the birds developed netiher lesions nor anitbodies. He
stated, "This is quite unusual. My hypotehsis is that there's something
really different about house finches that make them sisceptible tothis
disease. Their lack of genetic diversity is a strongpossibility, since
the founder population was so small.
The article also reports on the initial release of birds on Long
Island by pet dealers who had been selling the species as cage birds in
violation of federal law. When agent began to serve summonses, the
dealers simply released thei stock into the wild in 1940.

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