San Diego Union-Tribune (Sunday)
SUDDEN BLINDNESS IN BIRDS A MYSTERY
In the video, the young grackle takes a few wobbly steps along a sidewalk, pauses and then wobbles some more.
The bird’s eyes appear completely closed.
When Alexandra Dimsdale found the stumbling creature outside her D.C. home May 22, she wasn’t sure whether it was a crow or some other type of black bird. All she knew for certain was that it needed help.
She took the video after she called animal control officials for advice and before she covered her hands in plastic grocery bags, scooped the bird into an empty box and took it to City Wildlife, a rehabilitation center.
There, she learned that the bird was a fledgling grackle and that it probably had some sort of neurological illness that had left it blind.
“We can’t do anything for it, but we can put it out of its misery,” Dimsdale said a staff member told her.
What that staff member said next left her even more concerned: They had seen other birds with the same symptoms.
Dimsdale had started that day stepping outside her home and ended up walking into a mystery. Wildlife experts say that an unusual number of blind birds have been found dead or dying in the Washington region lately, and they don’t know why.
On Tuesday, the animal control team at the Animal Welfare League of Arlington released a public service announcement about the increase in calls since May 18 about sick and injured young birds. Most of the calls have involved grackles and blue jays.
“Eye issues were reported in what otherwise looked like healthy juvenile birds, causing blindness and the birds to land and stay on the ground,” the announcement says. “Animal Control is now seeing additional species of birds affected. Other agencies and localities across the region and state are reporting similar issues at this time.”
The announcement says that the Arlington team is working with a biologist from the Virginia Department of Wildlife Resources to coordinate testing of some of the dead birds.