Last week's cold and snowy weather makes this a good time to remind readers to fill bird feeders. Inexpensive bird feed mixes are available from grocery stores, garden shops, farm stores and discount stores throughout Carroll County.
Popular mixes include millet, cracked grain, cracked corn, milo, canary seed and sunflower seed. Put out some suet if you want to attract woodpeckers to your back yard.
Last year, I wrote a column about a national bird seed preference test being conducted by volunteers under the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology.
A recent report of the findings recorded nearly a half a million bird visits to cardboard squares used as bird feeders for the survey. Feeding habits were documented on more than 30 different bird species. This was the first attempt to gather information on such a vast geographic scale and for so many species of birds.
The tests revealed that "birds that usually feed in trees, including American goldfinches, white-breasted nuthatches and house finches, seem to prefer sunflower seeds."
Ground-feeding birds, such as "dark-eyed juncos, mourning doves and many species of sparrows, prefer millet."
It was also learned that birds found across the continent show East-West differences in their eating habits. For example, western chickadees and doves ate less sunflower and more millet or milo than their eastern counterparts.
"House finches are another example of this East-West split. Originally, these colorful finches lived only on the West Coast. But in 1940 pet dealers in New York released some birds. Now house finches are common in the East, where they seem to have adopted their feeder mates' taste for sunflower seed. Eastern finches visited sunflower seeds 85 percent of the time compared to only 71 percent for western finches," the report says.
Speaking of finches, Maryland's Department of Natural Resources recently announced that a strain of bacteria has been found as the probable cause of eye infections reported in house finches during the last year.
A study done by the Southeastern Cooperative Wildlife Disease Study Group at the University of Georgia has identified the bacteria as mycoplasma gallicepticum, which causes respiratory ailments in domestic birds. MG was found in a significant number of sick and healthy house finches taken from Baltimore, Montgomery and Prince George's counties last fall.
"In house finches, the disease is restricted to the eyes, nasal and sinus cavities," said former DNR Secretary Torrey C. Brown, M.D. "The source of the infection is unknown, but it is apparent that a new disease attributable to MG has emerged. Disease caused by MG has never before been recognized or reported in songbirds in the U.S."
The DNR began receiving reports of sick house finches last March and has received about 200 reports from all counties except Allegany.
Edith Thompson, the DNR's Urban Wildlife Project Manager, said, "All reports have been similar in that the birds' eyes are runny, crusted, or swollen."
The disease is not contagious to humans, cats or dogs, the DNR says, but is confined to house finches.
The DNR advises that people clean their feeders and bird baths at least one a week with a 10 percent bleach solution. Seeing a sick finch or two should not be cause for concern, but a consistently large percentage of sick finches may mean the disease is present. If you spot any sick finches, call the DNR at (410) 974-3195.
Local events scheduled
The Taneytown Rod & Gun Club is conducting a still target shoot today at 1 p.m. The club is at 12380 Shoemaker Road, west of Taneytown.
The Dug Hill Rod & Gun Club will conduct a trap shoot next Sunday at noon. The club is on Wine Road in Manchester.
Eagle numbers soaring
This year's mid-winter bald eagle survey was above average in Maryland. During the survey, 194 bald eagles and one golden eagle were counted at three of the state's primary eagle concentration areas. The highest count ever in the state was the 263 spotted in 1990.
"That year extremely cold weather pushed more eagles into Maryland," DNR biologist Glenn Therres said.
WEAVER WINS AWARD
Lonny Weaver has received the Leroy Whitman Memorial Award for Excellence in Craft from the 147-member Mason-Dixon Outdoor Writer Association. Weaver also won the M-DOWA award for Best Magazine Feature Article for his technical feature, "Practical Handloading for the Varmint Hunter," published in the 1994 edition of Handloaders Digest. Both awards were presented at the recent M-DOWA Conference in Westminster.