from Conserv@tion:
Every morning Jill Anderson puts out a handful of peanuts for the birds in her backyard in River Forest, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago. "The crows usually are there and get the first dibs on the peanuts," she said. In early August, the crows disappeared. Then Anderson noticed the blue jays started looking sick, followed by house finches and goldfinches, chickadees, and most recently she found a dead mourning dove, all apparently victims of the West Nile virus. "I loved the crow family that lived in my yard," Anderson said. "I think they're dead." The virus, blamed for dozens of human deaths and more than 1,500 cases of illness, is also taking a toll on avian wildlife in a wide section of the country from Minnesota south to the Gulf of Mexico and from Nebraska east to Ohio, experts say.
also the following was posted on the ng (hoping it's ok to reproduce it) :
West Nile has killed the entire bird population in my local on the wooded
> Rouge River valley near Detroit, Michigan. Hawks, crows, bluejays,
> sparrows, woodpeckers, others all dead! The virus must be thick in the
> mosquito population here......
Sounds pretty bad huh
El Annie:-C