Re: [cobirds] West Nile killing birds?

Hi SeEtta,

I'm sure there's herd immunity, but the question of evolution- whether the 'bottleneck' event we saw in prior years has conferred immune vigor to subsequent generations?  I'd leave that to Nick Komar to address...

Cheers,

Jim

Sent from my iPhone

On Aug 23, 2012, at 3:37 PM, SeEtta Moss <seettam@gmail.com> wrote:

I have been seeing more of the species that were hardest hit by the West Nile Virus in the past several weeks and none were dead or appeared ill.  I have been pleased with the recovery, finally, of Black-billed Magpies in my area which has been very slow.  I saw a number of Black-capped Chickadees in Canon City today, another species whose recovery has been slow.  And I have seen a lot of American Crows and a few Common Ravens around southeast Colorado in the past few weeks, all appearing healthy.

Is it possible  for birds that survived the first exposure to it to convey some resistance to West Nile Virus to their offspring?

SeEtta Moss
Canon City
Blogging for Birds and Blooms magazine @ http://birdsandbloomsblog.com/author/seetta-moss/
Personal blog @ BirdsAndBlooms.blogspot.com

On Thu, Aug 23, 2012 at 2:50 PM, James Wilson <iceaxe5@gmail.com> wrote:

As many of you have heard, we are experiencing a high level of West Nile transmission to humans this season.  Interestingly, we have not seen reports of bird die-offs as we did during the initial emergence of the virus.  If anyone on the list has information to the contrary, we would be quite interested!