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Ride to Wake Audubon walk; Re: house finches with sore eyes



Hi C-birders,

I'm leading Wake Audubon's dragonfly walk this Saturday, meeting at the 
NC Museum of Natural Science in Raleigh at 8 AM. However, a 
complication's come up: my fiance needs our car that morning. Is anyone 
driving from or through the Durham area that could give me a lift? I'd 
gladly buy lunch for my rescuer...

On Wed, 19 Sep 2001, Elayne and Michael Kodroff wrote:
> 
> Is anyone out there seeing alot of house finches with
> swollen or closed eyes?  I'm seeing probably 2 out of 10
> like this at my feeder, here in Manteo, N.C.

My cats have been paying much closer attention to the feeders lately than 
I have. However, even with my brief glances, I've noticed that nearly all 
of our finches have misshapen-looking heads consistent with that 
infectious eye disease that they keep getting. Or maybe the diseased ones 
are just spending more time in the feeder than the healthy ones. The 
disease has periodic outbreaks, and seems to be the main control on House 
Finch populations in the eastern US; the finch population booms, then 
the disease wipes many of them out, then the finches boom again... It 
occasionally gets into other related finches, like Purples and Golds, 
too, but much less often, and usually in association with feeders that 
haven't been cleaned in a while.

Good birding,

Josh


Joshua S. Rose
Duke University
Department of Biology (Zoology, R.I.P.)

jsr6@duke.edu
http://www.duke.edu/~jsr6/