Birds – Page 37 – David Bradley

Bird flu research halted

The UK’s Guardian newspaper is reporting that researchers working to prevent the spread of bird flu and the possible millions of deaths it could cause should a pandemic occur, have suspended their research for 60 days amid fears that they might accidentally trigger the very Â epidemic they hope to stop. A letter published on Friday in the scientific journals Nature and Science and signed by scientists from around the world appeals for public debate about the security of the work.

Bird flu scientists suspend work amid epidemic fears.

Owl pellet dissection

A friend of mine is into nature conservation in a big way and one of the tools of the trade, which to the outsider may seem rather odd, is owl pellet dissection. I had a go at dissecting an owl pellet myself, here you can see the results

Owl pellets are the regurgitated remains (bones, feathers and other indigestibles) that accumulate in this bird of prey’s gizzard after it dines on small rodents and other critters. The dessicated pellets are to be found lying where they are discarded by the owl and can provide important information about what critters are being preyed on in owl territory.

The only way to get at that information, however, is to tease apart the pellet with tweezers and other implements to extract the bones from the tangle of hair and other detritus. It needs a steady hand, a keen eye, and a lot of patience. What you will find within is quite amazing though, tiny jaw bones and skulls, femurs, tibias pelvic bones and more.

Identifying which bone belongs to which creature takes even more patience, but it is possible and provides useful insights into the prevalence or otherwise of particular small mammals in a given area where owls prey.

For more on owl pellet dissection, check out this site http://www.kidwings.com/owlpellets/.

The reason I bring it up (pardon the pun) today, is that owl pellet dissection was the hot new search phrase on the sciencebase site this last month, with dozens of visitors all flapping for information on the subject. It’s not a topic that’s been searched for here before, so I thought I’d provide some background in case we have another flutter of en-raptor-ed activity.

Herring Gulls fighting

These two birds I photographed in my in-law’s garden were anything but lovebirds, although they might look like they were dancing seconds before and seconds after they were tearing each other’s feathers off and spitting blood. This didn’t seem to be a bar-room brawl between chums fighting over fishy scraps, these two were at it for a good half an hour. It has to have been a territorial or mating rights argument of some sort.

Nature really is red in beak and claw.

Human to human bird flu

The World Health Organization has expressed concern that a recent cluster of deaths associated with the H5N1 virus in Indonesia may not have originated with an animal host, suggesting the possibility of human to human transmission of the virus. However, it also cautions that the analytical evidence suggests that the virus has not mutated into a human transmissable form, which means we are not just yet on the verge of a global bird flu pandemic after all.

The news media inevitably picked up on this warning and ran with it, but thankfully the BBC saw the double-edged nature of the WHO announcement points out with some degree of rational response that many people in Indonesia, as in other southeast Asian countries, live in such close proximity to their animals and not necessarily in the most hygienic of circumstances that the likelihood of catching bird flu is much higher in such an environment.

It is the lack of a mutated form of H5N1 among these victims that means we are not yet doomed to see the feathers fly globally.

Bird Flu Poll

H5N1 at last reached British shores this month and now both the Eastern and Western seaboards of the USA are on tenterhooks. In the spirit of serious scientific debate, I’ve posted a poll all about avian influenza on the SciScoop Science Forum.

So, are we all doomed to be tarred and feathered or is it just a load of media fluff and feathers? You decide.Meanwhile, check out SciScoop regular contributor Chad’s excellent ongoing posting on the bird flu story on SciScoop.

Talk about the birds and the bees

Can anyone explain why we use the phrase “the birds and the bees” as a euphemism for explaining the facts of life to our children? Surely the sex life of bees is about as different from most people’s as you can imagine and birds…well…unless you’re talking about the male ostrich and a handful of other birds they don’t even have anything vaguely like the same “bits”.

I’ve often wondered why the honey and feathers didn’t go down too well on our honeymoon night.