When she took her dog out to Oak Street Beach on their morning walk Sunday, Portia Belloc Lowndes came across a scene that was so disturbing, she said, it felt “like a horror show.”
Around 20 dead birds lay belly-up on the shore, with no apparent physical injuries. They were common and red-breasted mergansers, a type of diving duck that spends most of its time on the water.
“You don’t see them on land; they don’t walk around like mallards and some of the other species of ducks. They’re highly aquatic,” said Annette Prince, director of the Chicago Bird Collision Monitors. “So seeing them up on land is a clear sign of distress.”
For weeks, as farms and cities in Illinois deal with the growing toll of birds dying of avian flu, the rescue group has been getting calls in the Chicago area about geese, hawks and owls with symptoms of the virus. Since Friday, reports have come in of over 100 dead birds — mostly mergansers — along the lakefront and scattered as far inland as a mall in Skokie. Experts suspect it’s the bird flu.
“There shouldn’t be that number of dead birds — that sheer number of simultaneous birds that are sick and dead,” Prince said. “The ones that we find still alive show those symptoms. So the ones that are dead are presumed to have had the same thing.”
“I think they’re flying until they’re too sick, and they’re just dropping and staying on the ground, largely incapacitated, lethargic, with tremors,” she said. Others die on the water and get washed ashore by the tide.
At Oak Street Beach on Sunday, Belloc Lowndes saw a few live mergansers in the lake but noted that they didn’t look well. A volunteer rescued a lethargic bird after Prince’s group received a call about it being attacked by crows.
By the afternoon, most of the dead birds at the downtown beach had been cleaned up. At least five merganser carcasses were left, some covered in sand and others scavenged on — possibly by dogs, coyotes or even other birds.
A golden retriever sniffed the ground next to a common merganser that was mostly camouflaged between the piles of ice on the concrete at the south end of the beach. The moment its owner realized what was happening, he started nudging the dog with his knee, until he grabbed it by the collar and pulled it away.
Experts have urged pet owners to be careful as cats and dogs have reportedly caught the avian flu. Belloc Lowndes said most dogs outside during her morning walk showed no interest in the dead mergansers. But most owners felt uneasy.
“Everybody was freaked out,” she said. “And it’s really worrisome, the more you do research about it.”
On Saturday, the bird collision monitors rescued a few birds at nearby North Avenue Beach. A day later a single merganser floated in the lake by the pier. Prince, who viewed a video of the bird, said it looked outwardly fine but was unusual for it to be on its own and not diving for food.
In December, the avian flu was detected in two commercial flocks of poultry in Illinois, affecting 81,200 birds, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. With a small survival rate and a high risk of spread, Prince said, treatment is often not a viable option.
“So these birds usually have to be humanely euthanized, but rather than being attacked or freezing and starving while they’re slowly dying, we would like to pick up any that we can … so that they’re no longer suffering,” she said.
The bird flu will likely have to “run its course,” she added, or be prevented in at least captive and poultry populations with vaccines.
“The virus survives very well in cold and freezing temperatures, and if the groundhog (Punxsutawney Phil in Pennsylvania) was right today, we’ll be having six more weeks of winter,” Prince said. “This will be prolonged, and potentially our next concern is that it will spread to more species.”
In Illinois, Woodstock Willie did not see his shadow, forecasting an early spring.
Gulls and crows who scavenge on dead birds might be at risk of getting infected by the virus, she said. Recently, a flamingo and a harbor seal at the Lincoln Park Zoo died with the bird flu.
Prince urged area residents who find a sick bird to call the Chicago Bird Collision Monitors at 773-988-1867 and report deaths in bigger groups to the Illinois Department of Natural Resources through their respective district wildlife biologists, whose contact information can be found at wildlifeillinois.org.
“It’s pretty tragic,” Prince said. “It’s hard to see all these birds — these beautiful birds (dying).”
