We've had a trickle of sick siskins coming into care at PAWS. The veterinarians say the symptoms are consistent with salmonellosis. If you are seeing sick birds at your feeders, I highly recommend taking those feeders down and giving them a thorough cleaning (preferably with a 10% bleach solution). Otherwise they might become a vector for the spread of Salmonella.

Kevin Mack
Naturalist, PAWS Wildlife Center
Lynnwood, WA

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From: Pterodroma at aol.com [Pterodroma at aol.com]
Sent: Friday, March 09, 2012 11:45 AM
To: tweeters at u.washington.edu
Subject: [Tweeters] Re: Pine Siskins, tame and wild. Question??

Barry Ulman writes:
>The fat, docile Pine Siskins are sick.

Agreed! Sick. Death toll over here in my yard (Bellevue-Eastgate) stands at three, one a week for the past three weeks, one in the feeder tray itself, two others below but a few feet away, plus two more probables, alive but doomed at least, shuffling about on the ground and shrubs in other parts of 'homestead' that I never saw again. One of those of the doomed variety was just yesterday, nearly stepped on it as I stepped off the back porch but pulled back at the last split second when I suddenly saw it basking in the sunny warmth as my foot was coming right down on top. I lurched just enough and nearly fell off the porch. Then, it would have been me too, "I've fallen and can't get up", and there I'd be lying side by side with a sick Pine Siskin where we would both be dying together but at least we would be enjoying the last breaths of life in the warmth of the 60+ degree early Spring sun, ...so maybe not so bad :-)

Interestingly, tons of healthy Pine Siskins remain high, noisy, very active and healthy high up in the trees where they belong and have been faithfully persistent daily for all this time. Must be a really good crop way up there. And so, it seems, one by one, one becomes weaker and sickly and can't keep up with the flock much less can't get back up to the treetops, thus settles to the next best and closest thing, the feeder tray where it sits and eats, and sits and eats less, and sits and does nothing, and then is dead. 48-72 hours is the time frame in which all this happens I've noticed, and I have been keeping notes. When you're in practice retirement mode, you have time for this sort of thing :-))

So, I don't know if it's just the natural course of things around here and something that's relatively normal within Pine Siskins in general. A big flock, stays put in the tree tops for weeks on end, and gradually, nature being nature, just like with people, you and me, some are going to get sick and die. That which is immediately obvious to us as bird enthusiasts, the feeder tray, then is sort of the avian hospice for which this inevitability finally plays out. I mean really, how often does anyone go off walking through the woods or anywhere else and see dead birds other than the odd one here and there? Certainly not large numbers, and you're a person smitten by birds and consciously aware of birds are more likely to see an obvious roadkill, window strike, or witness a hawk or cat capture, then natural death in nature. Yet surely there must be large numbers, otherwise, bird's undying persistence would soon become overwhelming. Most birds, songbirds anyway, have relatively short life spans, and when they do die, they do so quietly in places we will never know much less see. Soon after that, nature continues to 'clean up' with all manner of scavengers, ranging from large to microscopically small, some not even animals, and soon leaving no trace whatsoever of that bird's existence. It lived it's life, did it's thing, and like all life, us included, is all too soon over.

Richard Rowlett
Bellevue (Eastgate), WA