Not-so-dirty birds? Not enough evidence to link wild birds to food-borne illness

JANUARY 31, 2020

by Sara Zaske, Washington State University

When food makes people sick, some blame birds because they hang around farms, and their feces can contain E. coli, Salmonella and Campylobacter, three common pathogens that can cause food-borne illness.

But a recent Washington State University study published in Biological Reviews on Jan. 31 has found scant evidence to support the link between wild birds and human illness involving those three pathogens.

The perceived risk of wild birds can impact their survival, said Olivia Smith, lead author on the study and a recent WSU Ph.D. graduate.

"Farmers are being encouraged to remove wild bird habitat to make their food safer, but it doesn't appear that these actions are based on data," Smith said. "When you restrict birds from agricultural settings, you are doing something that can lead to their decline."

Bird populations have been falling rapidly in recent decades. Scientists estimate that since 1970, North America has lost more than three billion birds. In light of this, the WSU researchers highlighted the need for more definitive research before destroying habitat and banning birds from fields in the name of food safety.

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Most microbes in hummingbird feeders do not pose health hazard

Feeders or flowers? Researchers compare microbes

Date:  March 6, 2019

Source:  University of California - Davis

Summary:

A new study is one of the first to address the potential for sugar water from hummingbird feeders to act as a vector for avian -- or even zoonotic -- pathogens. It found that the majority of microbes growing in feeders do not likely pose a significant health hazard to birds or humans.

Many people set up hummingbird feeders in their yards to nurture and watch these high-energy pollinators. But could the sugar water they provide be impacting these tiny feathered friends?

A study led by the University of California, Davis, is one of the first to address the potential for sugar water from hummingbird feeders to act as a vector for avian -- or even zoonotic -- pathogens. It found that the majority of microbes growing in feeders do not likely pose a significant health hazard to birds or humans.

The research, published March 6 in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B, explored the microbial communities that dwell in sugar water from feeders and compared them to those found in flower nectar and samples from live hummingbirds.

"Although we found high densities of both bacteria and fungi in sugar water samples from feeders, very few of the species found have been reported to cause disease in hummingbirds," said community ecologist and co-author Rachel Vannette, an assistant professor in the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology. "However, a tiny fraction of those microbes has been associated with disease, so we encourage everyone who provides feeders for hummingbirds to clean their feeders on a regular basis and to avoid cleaning feeders in areas where human food is prepared."

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Forest and Bird says more needs to be done for Northland kauri

Forest and Bird and the Northland Regional Council will work together to improve wording on the council's Regional Pest Management Plan following an Environment Court ruling. 

The interim decision by the court in February called for the two groups to work together to produce the final wording for the plan - focusing on an effective strategy which could help prevent the spread of kauri dieback. 

Phytophthora agathidicida (PA) is the pathogen which causes kauri dieback and can be spread through a pinhead of soil. The microscopic spores attach themselves to kauri roots, leech nutrients and starve the tree to death - there is no cure for the disease and its origin is unknown.

Forest and Bird Northland conservation advocate Dean Baigent-Mercer says while the plan relates to private land, further steps need to be taken to protect kauri on public land. 

"The two highest risks in spreading kauri dieback in Northland are where there's people moving mud around on their feet like the Te Araroa national walkway and DOC tracks," Baigent-Mercer says. 

"The other situation is where hunters take pigs or piglets from one spot that happens to be infected with kauri dieback and release them in another area and spread the invisible disease."

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Hunted to the brink, but Africa’s reviled vultures are vital in fight against disease

Wildlife photojournalist of the year exposes the plight of the endangered scavenger

Robin McKie Observer science editor

Sunday 16 October 2016 00.05 BST


Vultures are rarely viewed as the poster boys and girls of the natural world. They have repulsive eating habits and are strikingly ugly. Nevertheless, they play a critical role in maintaining the ecological health of many parts of the world.

Vultures consume animal carcasses more effectively than any other scavengers and because their digestive juices contain acids that neutralise pathogens such as cholera and rabies they prevent diseases spreading. They act as dead-end hosts for numerous unpleasant ailments. But many ecologists are now warning that vultures across the planet are under serious threat thanks to habitat loss, deliberate and accidental poisoning, and use of the birds’ body parts as traditional medicine cures.

All these risks will be emphasised by British photographer Charlie Hamilton James in a series of images that will be shown as part of the Wildlife Photographer of the Year exhibition, which opens at the Natural History Museum this week.

His photographs of vultures – and the growing environmental risks that threaten to wipe them out – have won Hamilton James the exhibition’s wildlife photojournalist of the year award.

“I like underdogs,” he said last week. “That is why I like vultures. The trouble is that vultures are now under such stress in the wild – for several reasons. They are facing a massive catastrophe yet they do so much for the environment and do so much to contain disease.”

Vultures are one of the fastest declining groups of animals in the world. In India, all nine species of the bird are threatened with extinction, largely through the indiscriminate use of diclofenac, a common anti-inflammatory drug administered to livestock but which is lethal for the vultures that eat the corpses of cattle.

“There is now a real danger that a disease like rabies will spread because there are hardly any vultures left to clean up corpses left in the open,” Hamilton James said.

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Ornithologist studies bird lice for answers on pathogens and evolution

Jan 05, 2015 by Sandy Bauers, The Philadelphia Inquirer

When Jason Weckstein looks at a bird, he doesn't see just a creature with feathers that flies.

He sees the bird as a teeming community of tiny creatures, some of which live and feast on its feathers, or that roam more widely and engage in more general mayhem, including gorging on the bird's blood.

When he talks about these things, his eyes light up and he smiles with pleasure.

"When I'm in the field, when I'm out bird-watching, I think, 'Boy, I'd love to get the parasites off that host, '" he said.

Weckstein, 43, is an expert on chewing lice - about 4,000 of them are known to live on birds - and this year left the Field Museum in Chicago to become associate curator of ornithology at the Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University.

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