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Ticks and birds




Quite a few years ago (can't recall -- I'd have to check my notes at 
home), I was finding at the feeders what looked at first like 
blind-in-one-eye House Finches.  Closer scrutiny with field glasses 
showed ticks, not blindness.  Then I saw other birds with the same 
problem, even a Northern Cardinal and a Junco once, but primarily the 
ticks appeared on House Finches.  One day, a House Finch was huddled 
in the corner of the front porch; both his eyes were completely 
closed.

I called a local avian specialist who put me in touch with the 
University of Georgia, who had a team that was studying this problem. 
They told me there was little hope of helping the one on my porch, he 
was so far gone.  They said they had had only minor success with 
removing the tick from a bird's head (the tick seems to start on top) 
and having the bird survive, but told me I could try.  But too late; 
the bird died the next day.  They were very interested in having the 
carcass for examination.  They sent me a special container to mail 
them the carcass and gave me papers permitting me to do so.  (Forgive 
me if I was breaking some sort of law.  I did not know what else to 
do.)

So much time has passed that I have forgotten the scientific name for 
this particular tick, but if I recall, the theory was that these 
ticks live on pine trees then get onto the birds.   The ticks in 
question are all the same gender, but I've forgotten which.  Although 
I keep my feeders clean anyway, they said the tick problem was not 
related to feeder cleanliness.  We discussed whether crowded 
conditions at feeders could pass ticks from one bird to another.  The 
researchers gave no solid answer but told me to continue to feed the 
birds as usual.

Please note that I am a total amateur -- not a scientist (as you can 
tell) and merely a backyard birder, going out on a limb here (no 
birding pun intended) to pass along my admittedly untrained 
observations.  I am sure the more learned birders in our listserve 
will have more accurate information, but I thought I would offer this 
information since I had participated in this study.

The number of birds with ticks on their heads grew alarmingly, and 
many other people in this area (Piedmont, NC) experienced this same 
problem that season.  The next year, I saw only one or two birds with 
ticks.  Then nothing for the many years after that.

Martha

Martha K. Brinson
Green Level community, NC
(Piedmont area, west of Raleigh)
brinson@ncsu.edu