Posted on 01/21/2011 5:54:23 AM PST by Fawn
YANKTON, S.D. (KTIV) -- It's happened in places like Louisiana, Arkansas and Kentucky. Hundreds of birds mysteriously found dead.
Folks in Yankton, South Dakota, thought they were being added to the list after hundreds of dead birds were found there on Monday. Turns out the unpleasant feathered discovery has a solid explanation. They were poisoned.
Some had thought 200 starlings found dead in Yankton's Riverside park had frozen to death. But they were actually poisoned on purpose, by the US Department of Agriculture.
Many of the European Starlings discovered by a passerby, were laying on the ground or frozen in trees. Officials first thought the birds were late to migrate and froze to death during the recent cold spell.
But that theory changed after Yankton police received a phone call from a USDA official who said the birds had been poisoned.
"They say that they had poisoned the birds about ten miles south of Yankton and they were surprised they came to Yankton like they did and died in our park," says Yankton Animal Control Officer Lisa Brasel.
The USDA confirms the story, saying the deaths were part of a large killing at a private feed lot in Nebraska.
They say a local farmer had been having troubles with about 5,000 starlings defecating in his feed meal. Department of Ag officials say because of health concerns for the farmer's animals and staff they decided to kill the birds.
They used a bait laced with the poison DRC-1339. The USDA says the birds ate the bait then flew back to Yankton and died.
They say poisoning isn't a common practice.
"We're doing it to address, in this case, agricultural damage as well as the potential for human health and safety issues," says Carol Bannerman USDA Wildlife Services.
USDA officials say they regret they had to kill the birds. But say there's no toxic concern to people or animals.
In all, officials estimate nearly 2,000 birds ate the poison. However, since the bait has been removed they don't expect any more birds to die
Starlings are a scourge.
Starlings suck, especially when their flocks number in the thousands and they're roosing in the trees around your house and squawking away..........
I say kill them all and let the cats sort them out.......and while we're on a killing spree, eradicate all those damn nasty house sparrows too!
FWIW, neither one is native to America, they're both just a useless invasive species of birds.....
They have extremely good aim..........
And they have a penchant for being lazy, too.
They hang around fishing piers and wait for you to catch a fish, then when you start hauling it in, they try and snatch it, thus getting entangled in the line and hooked in the beak. It is not a fun thing to wrestle a panicked pelican to get the line out of its mouth and lines wrapped all around its wings and body............
Only went fishing off a pier a few times, but yup....pelicans would get my fish.
Interesting! It’s neat to watch them fly low just above the ocean surface.
Yes please.
LOL! We need to let them land on bureaucrats.
...and all those bird houses that are usually set up on fence posts for the bluebirds are mostly taken up by the starlings.....
As a side note, bluebirds are supposed to be native to Michigan but I've only seen one pair in my entire life here.........In my bird book it says they made a comeback due to bird enthusiasts putting up thousands of bluebird houses but I suspect the continuously growing starling populations have taken over those house.....kinda like urban blight in the bird world.
If New Englanders had not brought Starlings to America in order to have all birds mentioned by Shakespeare in his writings in their country, then you might have a point.
But Starlings are not native to North America, they are a destructive species here, and are harmful to many native species. So any other species that does likewise should be eradicated.
That isn’t playing God, that is correcting our own mistake.
Now there's a real problem here in S.E. Michigan......I'm now starting to see dead ones on the side of the roads here like opossum and coons....
The Brown Pelican is the state bird of Louisiana.
Now you know why..................
You could justify the term ‘harmful to native species’ for almost every animal. Very few animals are ‘native to North America’. Get over it and just adapt.
Yes, I’d rather have the winged rats destroy the farmer’s livelihood.
Midwestern starling flocks are a huge nuisance, and have been for at least 4 decades. I can’t comment on the downstream safety of the method used to kill this flock, but in general I can’t see reducing the population as a bad thing.
Sorry - Starlings in huge masses suck.
You could go up and trap them and relocate them to your netted acreage around your house to keep them safe.
They also did it in NJ a couple of years ago:
http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2009/01/dead_birds_littering_franklin.html
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