Stuart:
> Kelly Cassidy wrote:
>
> > It is hard to imagine so much shot that a pond or lake would have a serious
> > lead pollution problem.

> There was a major kill of Greylag Geese and Mute Swans at Loch Eye, near
> Elgin, Scotland about 5 years ago when water levels fell so low that the
> feeding birds were able to pick up the lead shot which had accumulated on the
> bottom of the loch. As far as I remember there were hundreds of birds
> involved, with around 2-300 Greylag Geese being killed.

Yes, but again this is through pellet ingestion. I don't think
Kelly was arguing that pellet ingestion wouldn't be a problem,
merely that there wouldn't be enough lead to significantly
contaminate the water.

How much lead would it take? The information I've seen (and
maybe Jon has some knowledge of this) reported average densities
of about 180 pellets/yd^2 at the sites studied. I forget what
range they found, obviously some places would be higher, others
lower. This was after hunting season, just that season's count.
They made no effort to find pellets from previous years, presumably
it accumulates at a fairly steady rate year-to-year.

Or did. Now of course they'd find steel pellets. If they
become a problem we could at least sweep the bottom of the
pond with powerful magnets and pick 'em up! :)


- Don Baccus, Portland OR <donb at rational.com>