Spring diseases impacting West Texas birds

LUBBOCK, Texas — Around the spring every year, viruses and diseases in birds are more common to see all over the state and country according to Small Game Program Director for Texas Parks And Wildlife, Shaun Oldenburger.

“Just like us, there’s a lot of diseases in humans, wildlife have lots of diseases as well,” Oldenburger said.

Oldenburger told Everythinglubbock.com that while there’s a few different illnesses they see, there’s two bird diseases they’ve been really keeping an eye on this year. One of them is called trichomoniasis, a parasite of sorts, which Oldenburger said is most commonly found in morning doves.

“It’s not to be confused with the human version of that disease either, but it’s basically a protozoan that starts out in the digestive tract and then it creates lesions that actually go through the esophagus and make the bird difficult to breathe and eat,” explained Oldenburger. “And so that eventually causes death, usually in that bird.”

The other disease is something a lot of folks in West Texas and the Panhandle are a bit more familiar with highly pathogenic avian influenza.

“It’s a little bit different, obviously, and viruses respond to the environment a little bit differently and that’s usually transferred from bird to bird as well,” said Oldenburg. “We have seen highly pathogenic avian influenza actually transfer over into humans.”

Oldenburger said luckily, humans getting that disease is pretty uncommon, and birds haven’t given people trichomoniasis at all. However, he told Everythinglub bock.com that when wildlife is getting sick with the latter, it’s something to watch.

“We do see eruptions and doves every once in a while. We do not see it every year,” Oldenburger said. “All depends on the habitat conditions and also depends on what the precipitation is doing and temperature wise.”

Texas Parks and Wildlife has been tracking the diseases to find patterns, causes and more, but Oldenburger said others can help prevent the spread too, starting with bird feeders and baths.

“Make sure the feed can’t get wet,” said Oldenburger. “if you happen to see that, take those down, use like a 10% bleach concentration with water. Keep them down until you stop seeing dead birds or lethargic birds in your area, and then put those things back up after you see the disease kind of run its course.”

Because, while humans may not think about it too often, people and wildlife are pretty connected, which is something Oldenburger is a crucial reason why he does this work.

“We just want to make sure we track wildlife diseases because obviously, they can impact our agricultural industries as well,” Oldenburger said. “They can impact us as humans and obviously they can impact our wildlife populations, which we all enjoy.”

Oldenburger also said they’re expecting the numbers for these diseases to go down as we get closer to summer and the hot, dry weather that comes with the season.

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