Researchers closing in on mystery illness killing Toronto's most controversial birds

A contagious viral disease may be killing juvenile double-crested cormorants in Toronto

Lucas Powers · CBC News · Posted: Aug 24, 2018 4:00 AM ET | Last Updated: August 24

Authorities believe they're one step closer to identifying a mystery illness causing unusual behaviour and ultimately death in some juvenile birds on Toronto's waterfront. 

A swab sample taken from a visibly sick double-crested cormorant this week tested positive for a highly contagious avian viral disease called Newcastle disease, according to Brian Stevens, a pathologist at the Canadian Wildlife Health Cooperative.

Brain cells taken from the same animal also show signs of Newcastle disease, he added. Since the affliction can be devastating for both wild birds and poultry, a brain sample will now be sent to the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) for further testing. 

"It's all preliminary at this point, but there are signs suggesting that it is indeed Newcastle disease," said Stevens, adding that the process could take a number of weeks to complete. 

The initial result provides some insight into what might be causing dozens of Toronto's most controversial birds to act so strangely. 

About three weeks ago, people using the area around Tommy Thompson Park started reporting finding double-crested cormorants behaving oddly. Individual birds were seen walking down trails nearby people — unusual for the species. Others were found acting as though their wings or necks were broken. 

One video posted to Facebook shows a cormorant with its head tilted sharply to the side, standing in a shallow puddle, seemingly unaware of human activity around it. The user who posted the video said in the comments that the bird stayed that way for hours. 

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In the shadow of Canada’s biggest city, the piping plover struggles to survive

IVAN SEMENIUKSCIENCE REPORTER

PUBLISHED JULY 3, 2018UPDATED 2 DAYS AGO

Endangered they may be, but, this summer, two piping plovers are raising a family of tiny chicks on a Toronto beach where the species has not successfully nested in more than 80 years – all within sight of downtown skyscrapers, hungry predators and airplanes taking off overhead.

Starting on June 20, a total of four eggs hatched in the couple’s nest on the sand at Hanlan’s Point on Toronto Island. Looking no bigger than fuzzy golf balls on toothpicks, the hatchlings have been scurrying around under their parents’ watchful gaze ever since.

“Everybody’s loving them,” said Andrea Gress, who co-ordinates the monitoring of piping plover nests across Ontario for Bird Studies Canada, and who has been working with volunteer monitors at the site.

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Toronto's noisy streets could be drowning out bird communication, new study says

A study out of Western Ontario says says songbirds have a harder time learning their songs when exposed to traffic noise.

Researchers studied the Zebra Finch, a bird native to Australia that can be found in per stores because they are easy to bred in the lab. But they are interested in what the results mean for wild song birds found in Toronto such as Yellow Warblers.

By: May Warren Metro Published on Tue Aug 30 2016

For a bird in the city, life can be a beak.

There are condo windows to avoid, light pollution and killer cats. Now, add to that noise that can make it nearly impossible to communicate with a friend, or worse, a potential mate.

Scott MacDougall-Shackleton, director of the Advanced Facility for Avian Research at Western University, has just published the results of a study that highlights the problem.

Birds exposed to urban noises like cars, motorcycles and the occasional siren have a harder time learning songs, the study showed, and that could make it harder for them to attract one another for breeding.

Just as we learn how to speak “birds have to hear their own species and practice” in order to produce their species’ normal sounds, the London, Ont., based researcher explained.

The study focused on baby zebra finches, which are native to Australia, because they are considered the “white lab rats” of songbirds. But, regardless of the songbird involved, the results are thought to be universal.

Anything that decreases the number of birds being born could have a trickle down effect, said Michael Mesure, executive director of bird advocacy organization Fatal Light Awareness Program (FLAP).

Source  

Toronto Wildlife Centre nurses birds injured by window collisions

For years the thousands of birds killed by smashing into glass buildings in the GTA have made headlines around the world. But what you might not know is that almost 40 per cent of the birds that collide with these buildings survive, says Michael Mesure, executive director of the Fatal Light Awareness Program (FLAP), a Toronto-based non-profit.

FLAP volunteers patrol the streets of downtown Toronto’s financial district twice a day, looking for dead or injured migratory birds. The injured birds are transported carefully in brown paper bags to the Toronto Wildlife Centre for treatment.

The centre is no stranger to seriously injured birds — they cared for nearly 700 of them in the last year alone.

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Birds migrating through Toronto face tough flight

BY KEVIN CONNOR ,TORONTO SUN

FIRST POSTED: SATURDAY, APRIL 26, 2014 06:00 PM EDT

TORONTO - The Fatal Light Awareness Program geared up for this spring’s bird migration through Toronto with the hopes that fewer of their feathered friends will die flying into skyscrapers.

The charity, with a league of volunteers, has been working for more than two decades to highlight and reduce the plight of the 1 million rare birds that die in the city’s downtown every spring and fall.

The Canada warbler is on the endangered species list. 

(QMI Agency file photo)

“We are happy that things are improving. It is an exercise in patience for change to happen and there is still a lot of work to do,” said Michael Mesure, executive director of FLAP.

Last year, Ontario implemented the Environmental Protection Act which puts restrictions on how buildings can reflect light.

Mesure says developers are starting to construct bird friendly buildings.

Birds in the city can easily get disoriented as they migrate south between March and May and come back between August and October.

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Toronto’s water birds hit hard by brutal winter weather

Toronto’s ducks and geese are among the hardest-hit victims of this year’s brutal winter weather.

Calls about dead birds — found stuck in the ice or floating lifeless in the water — shot up 66 per cent between Jan. 1 and Mar. 12 compared to the same period last year, according to Toronto Animal Services.

Meanwhile, the city’s only wildlife rescue charity has been overwhelmed with dozens of fragile, injured and dying birds, making this the worst winter it has seen in 21 years of operation.

“They’re weak and they’re starving,” said Nathalie Karvonen, executive director of the Toronto Wildlife Centre. “Some of the birds are having traumatic injuries as well because they’re in a weakened state.”

The centre has rescued about 10 times as many water birds as it does during a normal winter, more than 130 since December. Admissions of wildlife are up 50 per cent overall, said Karvonen.

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Hundreds of dead birds on display to raise awareness about bird-building collisions

By Heather Loney Global News

TORONTO – The bodies of over 1,700 birds are on display in Toronto’s Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) on Monday.

More than 90 species of birds, including federally protected species at risk, are included in the display. All of the birds exhibited in the ROM’s Rotunda died while trying to navigate Toronto’s skies last year.

Every year millions of migrating birds are killed from crashing into buildings in North America, according to non-profit organization Fatal Light Awareness Program (FLAP) Canada.

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Toronto’s rare breed of high-flying pigeons

When you visit Tony Puopolo’s home in Pickering, Ont., and he likes you, he might offer a parting gift of pigeon poop. In Toronto, the excreta of the humble pigeon is often made up of city litter. But Mr. Puopolo’s blend is produced by the 70 racing pigeons he keeps in a luxurious backyard coop. They’re fed a strict diet of corn, barley and wheat, which, when digested, apparently become great fertilizer for vegetable gardens.

Pigeon racing’s popularity has dwindled throughout Mr. Puopolo’s lifetime, despite Mike Tyson coming out during his post-boxing career as a pigeon fancier (the proper term for those who race). The Canadian Racing Pigeon Union has about 1,000 members – roughly half as many as it had in the 1980s.

Though the heyday of pigeon racing was the first half of the 20th century in Canada, a small but strong group is keeping the sport alive – most of them concentrated in the GTA and Southwestern Ontario, according to Oscar DeVries, the president of the Canadian Racing Pigeon Union. They breed the birds in on farms or in suburban backyard coops, trade them to experiment with mixing bloodlines and sell some of their best birds (or descendants of their best birds) at auctions.

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Decisions Imminent in Landmark Trials Over Toronto's Worst Bird Killing Buildings

MEDIA RELEASE 

(Washington, D.C., November 9, 2012) Many of the 48 million Americans who enjoy bird watching will have a strong interest in the pending verdicts in two unprecedented lawsuits in Toronto, Canada. One of the deadliest threats to birds worldwide – building collisions – has, in a sense, been put on trial.

A verdict in the first trial, which began in April, 2011, is expected from Justice of the Peace William Turtle on November 14.  It pits the owners of three adjoining glass office buildings – Consilium Place Towers – against two environmental groups – Ecojustice andOntario Nature.

Those groups claim that the buildings, whose exterior faces are almost entirely glass, are responsible the deaths of about 7,000 birds in the last decade, making them likely the most deadly in the entire Greater Toronto area.

Menkes Consilium Inc., Menkes Developments Ltd., and Menkes Property Management Services Ltd., along with three other companies, have been charged under Canada’s Environmental Protection Act with discharging a contaminant – light reflected from the glass – that causes harm to animals. In addition to possible fines under that law, the companies also face a maximum fine of $60,000 under the Ontario Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act for causing birds to be in distress. The lawsuit followed lengthy, failed attempts to negotiate a settlement between the parties.

The verdict in the second trial, which began in April  2012, is expected from Judge Melvyn Green on December 4, 2012. Cadillac Fairview Corporation, the owner of three office buildings in the city, has been charged with violating Canada’s Species at Risk Act. The charges are being brought in a private prosecution by Ecojustice.

Read more:  http://www.abcbirds.org/newsandreports/releases/121109.html