To follow up on this topic, after cleaning and taking down the feeders for 2 weeks, this chickadee hasn't returned.
Because I was curious about the reported rate of birds with deformed beaks in Colorado, so I asked the Alaska Science Center which has been collecting reports on birds with deformed beaks about it. I finally heard back from them today. Here's the reply from the biologist Lisa Pajot: "As far as I can tell, your report is the first for a deformed black-capped chickadee. We have had several reports of deformed mountain chickadees and we have had around 50 reports of various species of deformed birds from Colorado over the years." I hope that the chickadee that I had seen really just had an injury instead of the virus spreading to Colorado. Phoenix Kwan Broomfield, CO On Saturday, February 23, 2019 at 7:51:53 PM UTC-7, [email protected] wrote: > > I found this chickadee with deformed beak in my yard yesterday. There may > be even one more chickadee like this hanging out in my yard because I got a > brief look at one today with just extra long beak and not twisted. > > > [image: DSCN4127.JPG] > > According to some research, such birds carries a new form of virus but > scientists haven't established the causal relationship between the virus > and the deformed beak yet ( > https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/08/twisted-beaks/). Time to > sterilize the feeders again *sigh* > > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Colorado Birds" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/cobirds/cfa83e9b-cdac-4f3e-aacf-ee6fa88b1e2f%40googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
