West Nile devastates the East Coast

[Donna]

Birds that once flourished in suburban skies, including robins, bluebirds and crows, have been devastated by West Nile Virus, a new study has found.

Populations of seven species have suffered dramatic declines across the continent since West Nile first emerged in the United States in 1999, according to a first-of-its-kind study. The research, to be published Thursday by the journal Nature, compared 26 years of bird breeding surveys to quantify what had been known anecdotally.

“We're seeing a serious impact,� said study co-author Marm Kilpatrick, a senior research scientist at the Consortium of Conservation Medicine in New York.

West Nile Virus, which is spread by mosquito bites, has infected 23,974 people and killed 962 since 1999, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

But the disease is primarily a bird virus, hitting seven species hard enough to be scientifically significant. Of the American crow, blue jay, tufted titmouse, American robin, house wren, chickadee and Eastern bluebird, only the blue jay and house wren bounced back, in 2005.

The hardest-hit species has been the American crow. About one-third of crows across the United States have been killed by West Nile, said study lead author Shannon LaDeau, a research scientist at the Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center in Washington. The species was on the rise until 1999.

In some places, such as Maryland, crow loss was at 45 per cent, and around Baltimore and Washington, 90 per cent of the crows were gone, Ms. LaDeau said.

While crows are scavengers and often disliked, they play a key role in nature by cleaning up animal carcasses, she said. Researchers will next look into what species benefit from the disappearance of crows.

Researchers noted the die-offs came in patches, with many in some places and none in others. Maryland appeared to be at the centre of bird deaths, although that was partly because the data were not as good from New York, where the virus first hit, Ms. LaDeau said.

Chickadees, Eastern bluebirds and robins in Maryland were 68 per cent, 52 per cent, and 32 per cent below expected levels in 2005. Tufted titmouse populations in Illinois were one-third of what they were expected to be.

“It tends to be more suburban areas. Some of the common backyard species including the blue jays, the robins, the chickadees have suffered significant declines,� Ms. LaDeau said. “That heavily packed urban corridor is a bad place to be a bird. The reason for that is that the mosquito prefers human landscape. They do very well in suburbia.�

The birds act as an early warning system for humans, said Wesley Hochachka, assistant director of bird population studies at Cornell Lab of Ornithology.

“If you start seeing crows dying and dying in numbers, that means there could be a human outbreak,� said Mr. Hochachka, who was not involved with the study.

The researchers looked at 20 species that were regularly counted each breeding season and found that populations of 13 species were not down because of West Nile. Biologists say that they have seen other species with many deaths, including owls, hawks, sage grouse and yellow-billed magpies, but that there are no breeding surveys to quantify how bad the problem has been.

Although entire small clusters of crows were “wiped out by West Nile Virus in a single season,� Greg Butcher, director of bird conservation at the National Audubon Society, remained hopeful.

“All of those (bird populations) have the capacity to rebound,� he said.