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ZEISS DTI thermal imaging cameras. For more discoveries at night, and during the day.

Disinfecting Feeder (1 Viewer)

PNWAlan

Registered User
I just started feeding about two months ago. As I have learned to become more observant I have noticed 1 or perhaps 2 house finches with foot pox. Thank goodness no indications of eye infections in any of the finches. The feeder stays pretty much occupied throughout the day with house/purple finches, gold finches, sparrows, juncos, blackbirds.

I have been cleaning and disinfecting the one hopper feeder in the back yard once per week with Simple Green, then a 1:4 bleach solution soak, then a thorough rinse. Should I be disinfecting the feeder more often? I don't think anything wil work better than bleach, but I am open to suggestions.
 
If you are seeing sick birds(or dead!) around your feeders, I would suggest you take your feeders down completely, wearing gloves, until you do not see any sick birds for at least a few weeks. I clean my feeders with a solution of one part bleach to 9 parts water. You also need to clean up the area underneath the feeders as well. Sorry. Incidently, I'm North of Seattle, where are you located? You might want to put out an alert in Tweeters, the email birdlist at the UW.
 
I'm in Arlington. Are you a PAS member? I'm not yet.

Haven't seen any dead finches. The ones I saw with the pox acted completely healthy. At first thought the one was banded with red leg bands until I got some glass on it and saw the pox. Just happened to be reading "The Sibley Guide to Bird Life & Behavior" so was able to identify what I was seeing. According to Sibley the foot pox is fairly common in western finches and not as deadly as the the finch bacterial eye disease. Found a fountain of info at Cornell web site about the eye disease, but not much info out there about foot pox.

I am retired and currently recovering from surgery so will have time to monitor the feeder for a while. I bring it into the garage every night to discourage rats so will disinfect the perches every night. If I see more occurrences of the pox will reconsider taking it down.
 
House finches are very social birds and I'm not sure feeders are a major factor in spreading disease amongst them, certainly no harm in disinfecting them of course. In my area of Canada, there was an outbreak of an eye disease specific to the house finch population that swelled their eyes shut and made them unable to fly or find food. The only birds that are known to have survived that outbreak were in fact the ones rescued from around feeders and taken to bird rehab facilities, but the regional population was effectively reduced to zero and took several years to recover. Prior to that, I myself had noticed their numbers at my feeders had greatly increased so perhaps disease is a way the species controls itself but again, feeders probably played a role in all this. How large a one cannot be known- they congregate in the wild as well after all.
 
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