Psittacine Beak and Feather Disease

The other day I had a direct-to-boot order to pick up, just a few minutes from home. The late afternoon light was beautiful so I strapped my camera gear into the passenger seat despite the very unlikely chance that I’d see anything to photograph.

Imagine my disbelief as I pulled into the laneway for pickups and saw a couple of dozen cockies cavorting with glee thanks to a truck driver having strewn some mixed seeds across the asphalt.

I pressed the ‘I’m here’ button at the dismal back entrance to the store and grabbed my camera. It was beautiful to watch these magnificent birds interacting with each other. A couple of times they shrieked into the air when they were startled but soon settled back down. I love capturing fine details and doing that with gorgeous birds in perfect light is an absolute joy. In the photograph above the cockie was perched on an industrial fence, you can see how low the sun was from the reflection in its eye and the shadow on its crest. It was ruffling its feathers so they are raised on its head and face which highlights their fringed edges, especially as they partially veil the bill.

I didn’t notice the individual above until I been watching the group for several minutes. This poor bird is suffering from a fairly common disease called Psittacine Beak and Feather disease, or PBFD, that mainly affects cockatoos, parrots and lorikeets. It’s not curable and as affected birds’ immune systems are often impacted they generally lose their lives to secondary infections. PBFD is highly contagious and spreads between birds from their droppings and feather dust, as well as being passed to nestlings.

There are two ways we can help with this issue. Firstly, affected birds may be able to be caught and humanely euthanised which will alleviate their suffering and the risk of them passing the disease to others in their flock. Secondly, the disease is often spread at feeding sites where birds congregate. The virus can be very long-lived and feeding cockies in the same area can spread the disease more widely. Choosing to feed these birds can have serious consequences, and not just to your balconies and window frames.

I was going to add a link to a post I wrote several years ago called Crimson Rosellas – to feed or not to feed – actually I’ll still share the link but I’ll also share some of the article here as it raises some important issues to consider:

Crimson Rosellas and other birds from the parrot family can be attracted to bird feeding trays in gardens and parks, and sometimes become tame enough to land on people who are offering seeds. There has been a lot of talk online recently about whether wild birds should be artificially fed – despite the comments being in print it’s clear that people on both sides were raising their voices. On the pro side people enjoy seeing the birds up close, it strengthens their bond with nature and they truly believe they are doing no harm. I used to be in that category but soon learned that it is far better to plant trees and shrubs that attract the birds, and to supply clean water rather than food. Psittacine Beak and Feather disease is a life-threatening illness that affects parrots and causes feather loss and grossly deformed beak growth. This devastating virus is highly contagious and easily spread by the poop, crop contents and feather dust that builds up at and around feeding stations. Tiny hatchlings can also be infected and nesting hollows can remain contaminated for many years. There is no cure for the illness though occasionally a bird survives only to become a carrier, spreading the virus and infecting other birds.

Psittacine Beak and Feather disease doesn’t affect humans but another parrot disease, psittacosis, occasionally does; psittacosis is also known as parrot fever. It’s a serious, but thankfully rare, illness and doctors recommend taking care not to inhale dried secretions when handling parrots or cleaning feeding tables.

There are also concerns about birds not foraging appropriately in the wild when food is offered at feeding stations. So many people vigorously ridiculed this notion, stressing that the birds come and go from their verandas and clearly forage in the wild – so many people, in fact, that I can’t help but wonder if the birds are getting breakfast at one place before flying to another home a couple of streets away and so on through the day. The issue here is that the birds will not be getting appropriate nutrition. Parrots are particularly fond of sunflower seeds and will carefully pick them out of a selection of mixed seeds but this can result in deficiencies in amino acids and calcium resulting in metabolic bone disease causing fractures, weakness and shaking. It also affects the viability of eggs as the shells are often too thin to sustain the embryo. There are other conditions directly related to inappropriate feeding including heart failure, obesity and the wing deformity commonly known as ‘angel wing’.

In some places artificial feeding supplies a vital supplement to birds that would otherwise not survive, particularly after bush fires or during harsh winters where habitat destruction has reduced the availability of natural food but apart from that I think we’re all better off creating bird-friendly gardens. I’m passionate about birding ethics and if you are too you might be interested in joining the facebook group I set up: Ethical Bird Photography

As I’ve been writing this a large group of very noisy cockies have been cavorting in the eucalypts. The racket they make always makes me smile, even at first light in the mornings!

Happy birding, Kim

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