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The Peregrine Chick:
--- Quote from: Moonstar on August 11, 2013, 15:43 ---Thanks for your answer. I guess we just have to hope it won't hurt the falcons or any other birds, what ever it was.
--- End quote ---
Looking back over my response I realized that I forgot to mention that the peregrines tend not to take prey birds that look/could be ill so chances are that even if they were to come across an ill/poisoned bird it would be unlikely that they would prey upon it. And now that the story has made the news hopefully if is poison laid down whoever did it will stop rather than risk further publicity ... And yes hopefully all our birds will be safe from that and similar hazards!
Moonstar:
Thanks for your answer. I guess we just have to hope it won't hurt the falcons or any other birds, what ever it was.
The Peregrine Chick:
As an addendum ...
There was a similar case with that I heard about from a raptor researcher doing some work in Argentina. Swainsons Hawks were found dead and dying from where they had literally dropped from their perches on the branches in an avenue of trees beside a field that had just recently been sprayed with pesticide. The pesticide was an organophosphate insecticide/pesticide (DDT is an organochlorine pesticide). Swainsons tend to prey a lot on insects in the area (grasshoppers = lots of protein) and the hawks congregate in large groups. Field was sprayed, grasshoppers ate sprayed crops, hawks ate grasshoppers then went to perch and started dying. Hundreds of hawks that turned into thousands that year. That particular type of organophosphate pesticide entered the market in 1964, Silent Spring came out in 1962 and DDT started to be banned in the late 1960s.
Here's more:
* Monocrotophos-Induced Mass Mortality of Swainsons Hawks in Argentina, 1995–96 - system should pop-up with the first couple of pages of the article, if not click on "look inside to see the start of the article - if you want the whole article you need to buy it or have a subscription to the journal
* Birdlife Data Zone: Pesticides continue to poison birds on a large scale - this is a summary & includes likes to other mass mortality incidents
* Fifteen Years After Disaster: The Swainson’s Hawk is Safer in Argentina
Interestingly, there was a Swainsons mass death due to a hailstorm in Argentina:
* Hailstorms as a cause of mass mortality of Swainson Hawks in their wintering grounds (whole article - pdf format)
The Peregrine Chick:
--- Quote from: Moonstar on August 11, 2013, 07:17 ---If birds are poisoned, does it act quickly or are they able to fly around awhile before it kills them?
If they are able to fly around then would poisoned pigeons or any other poisoned birds harm the falcons if one of them happened to be a meal?
Just wondering because of those black birds that were possibly poisoned by poison left out for the pigeons.
--- End quote ---
In case folks were on holidays, this is what Moonstar is referring to: Dead birds fall 'like raindrops' in Winnipeg's North End
To answer your question Moonstar, it would depend on the poison and how much ingested that would influence whether the birds could fly around. But yes, they can fly after poisoning but whether they will and how far depends on the bird, poison, location, etc.
If it was poisoning, what type of poison was used is nearly impossible to say without the necropsy results. There are pigeon control products that don't kill the pigeons but do make them sick and they then move along. Most folks who understand anything about pigeon control know that poisoning doesn't work, you need to exclude them from their roosting locations and exclusion techniques are primarily non-toxic and non-lethal. Folks who don't know about pigeon control might do something like use rat poison or some such but pigeons aren't stupid and they won't eat it but other species might. And sometimes folks get creative and use products that are for other purposes but they use it because it is on hand.
Having said that, there have been intentional poisoning of pest bird species such as this one in South Dakota a couple of years ago
* Hundreds Of Dead Birds In South Dakota Were Killed By U.S. Government
Now grackles are omnivores - they eat pretty much anything: crops, bugs, eggs/chicks, garbage, you name it, that's why they are so successful. (All About Birds - Common Grackle) And they are gregarious so they could have all been affected at the same source and that is a lot of ground to cover. So it could have been intentional, unintentional or accidental - once they have performed toxicological testing, they should have a better idea of what it could have been.
I know that pest control firms in Winnipeg avoid using poisons wherever possible so they don't have indirect/incidental deaths. And they know about the peregrines. There used to be poison on rooftops all the time when the project first began and so far as I can recall, we have never had an incidental death on record. We have had poisoning but it was accidental - for example when a chick ingested some oil.
Hope this answered your question ...
Jazzerkins:
Good question moonstar. I was wondering the same thing as were these birds died is not all that far from the Radisson or HSC.
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