I’m not sure if I should be worried or not---

Yesterday morning I opened the front door to let the dogs out and laying on the sidewalk right in front of the door was a sparrow. It was obviously in some sort of distress. Buster grabbed it up, but he dropped it when I asked him to. I removed the bird from the yard, but all at once a bunch of things came together-

1. The bird’s body position was the same as the birds I saw at the riding stable back in 2002 when we had the outbreak there that killed Hannah…unpleasant thoughts for sure.
2. I remembered over the previous two weeks seeing 2 other distressed birds that were flopping around oddly and I thought they must have slammed into the big glass window, now I’m not so sure.

I got to work and gave it more thought and read up on our county policies about West Nile. Since we have already had cases reported in our zip code there is no point in reporting the dead birds, they won’t send them in for testing.

When I got home I realized something a little freakier…..other than the flock of humminbirds, we have no birds flying around…as in zero. This might not be odd for some people, but we have a very bird friendly area and normally our purple martin house is full of sparrows- there are doves moving between the old schoolhouse roof and the power lines, there are woodpeckers beating on trees and screaming at each other. In the evening the swallows show up to grab bugs. Last evening from the time I got home until I went in around 7pm there I saw one single house sparrow. This morning I didn’t’ hear any woodpeckers (they are active in the morning) and saw no birds except for the hummers, who are working the feeders over pretty good. I didn’t even see any of the vultures that usually soar on the thermals from the top of our ridge and then down to the river.

I got nervous enough that I started mowing all the areas I neglected during the heat wave, and I went on a walkabout looking for standing water. I did find some larvae in Jess’s canoe and I drained it and put it up so it won’t hold water. I didn’t see many other areas that could hold water, but I have some weedy damp areas that need to be cleared out.

I’m thinking that we are in some sort of West Nile hot zone and all the birds have died as a result. I wonder if hummer’s are more resistent for some reason. What is our bug population going to look like if all the birds are gone? Also, we have quite a few birds that are kind of getting rare, like Pileated woodpeckers, indigo buntings and eastern bluebirds.