First we heard about the honeybee collapse that could harm the agriculture. Now other birds in Ohio including the bluebird. Fiction for some purpose or something more important? Come to think of it the number of bluebirds I have seen this winter has been… well, infrequent. From the Dispatch.
WASHINGTON — Several common species of North American birds, particularly crows, have suffered drastic population declines since the arrival of the West Nile virus eight years ago, leaving rural and suburban areas quieter and imposing ecological stresses on a range of other animals and plants, a new study has found.
In Maryland, for example, 2005 chickadee populations were 68 percent lower than the level projected had West Nile not arrived, and in Virginia they were down 50 percent.The analysis, led by researchers at the National Zoo, offers sobering evidence that even a microscopic invasive species can wreak long-term environmental disruption.
The virus is native to Uganda and is thought to have hitched a ride to New York inside a bird or mosquito in 1999, probably on a plane or ship. It quickly spread across the United States, one mosquito bite at a time, leaving a large but unknown number of birds dead in its wake — along with thousands of horses and, to date, about 1,000 people.
