An unknown illness affecting songbirds in multiple states still hasn’t been identified — but it doesn’t seem to have reached Southwest Virginia, and cases are dropping in the areas where it has been detected, the Southwest Virginia Wildlife Center of Roanoke (SVWC) said.
In light of that news, the group said this week that it’s fine for bird feeders and baths to come back out in Southwest Virginia and Northeast Tennessee. But it encouraged people to feed birds using native plants rather than feeders, and stressed that anyone using bird feeders should thoroughly clean them at least once a week.
“It never quite got here, we don’t think,” Chester Leonard, SVWC’s assistant director, said Friday. “And if it did, there were only a handful of cases. … That’s great news, of course. Any time that we aren’t losing wildlife, that’s a great thing.”
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“You never know, it could resurge. That’s always possible,” he added. “But it seems to be going away.”
The mystery disease began showing up in Northern Virginia and multiple other states in late May, according to the Virginia Department of Wildlife Resources (DWR). Common symptoms have included tremors, difficulty balancing, tilted heads and swollen, oozing or encrusted eyes. The hardest-hit species seem to be common grackles, blue jays, American robins and European starlings.
On June 29, after finding two dead birds with signs of the illness, SVWC issued an urgent advisory for residents in the region to take down bird feeders and baths. The idea was to “be proactive, not reactive,” the group said, since the disease seemed to be spreading and experts weren’t sure what it was or how it was transmitted.
DWR also urged people to take down and clean their feeders in the Northern Virginia regions, where the illness had already shown up.
But in a July 28 update, DWR said that reports of birds showing the eye and neurological symptoms associated with the disease had dropped by 50%.
The agency still recommended that people stop using bird feeders in the affected regions in Northern Virginia. Virginians beyond those regions should take down bird feeders if they find multiple dead birds on their property over a short period of time, it said.
On Wednesday, SVWC shared its own recommendation that feeders and baths could come back out in the region.
“It seems the disease is concentrated to our north and the number of cases seems to be declining,” the SVWC statement said.
“That being said, the best way to care for and feed our local birds is to plant native perennials,” the statement said. “Native plants provide more habitat and nutrition for birds (especially babies), are not as likely to transfer disease from bird to bird, and better support bird populations long-term.”
The group recommended searching Audubon’s Native Plants Database (www.audubon.org/native-plants), which is searchable by zip code, and asking local nurseries if they have any of the results in stock.
The group also reiterated that birds “are not reliant on feeders” at this point in the year, so keeping them down won’t leave them hungry.
“If you do decide to feed birds again, we strongly recommend everyone clean their feeders at least once a week with a 1:10 bleach to water solution,” the statement said. “We still don’t know what the cause of the disease is, and for that reason, we ask everyone to do their best about cleaning their feeders.”
“Without conclusive results, it is difficult to make the right call, which is why you may have heard various conflicting [recommendations] over the past few months from various sources,” SVWC said in the statement. “There is pressure to have a definitive answer — we humans like easy answers — but the biological world is complicated and messy.”
What about those two dead birds that SVWC sent to labs for testing?
“I’m not sure of their status, if they’ve already been, like, broken down with their blood samples,” Leonard said. “They probably can’t tell us that yes, that is, in fact, the disease, because they’re still trying to figure out what the disease is.”
DWR hasn’t even picked up some additional birds that residents have since submitted to the wildlife center, he said.
Leonard added that his team was grateful to everyone who responded to SVWC’s proactive recommendations.
“We’ve had a lot of positive feedback. Of course, some people have pushed back [with statements like], ‘Oh, you’re crazy,’” he said. “But a lot of folks really care about the wildlife, took their feeders down and we’re grateful for that. … It’s nice to know that in the future, when you put something out there to try to save wildlife, people will respond and try to help us and the wildlife as well.”
