Blind Fear, Not Disease, To Blame For Bird Die-Off

Watsonville streets ran red with blood Saturday. Motorists told Watsonville Patch dead birds on near the sloughs on Main Street.

"The road was getting pretty bloody before the rain," one reader tweeted to Patch. "It's odd, new birds are laying there each day. Sad and pretty creepy."

The dead coots have been found on roads near the sloughs and a Pinto Lake for the past two weeks, Watsonville city biologist Robert Ketley explained.

The small waterfowl are about the size of pigeons and, this time of year, are migrating from Alaska and the Pacific Northwest to point south for the winter. Watsonville's wetlands are a perfect stopping-off point in that journey.

But they're not the brightest birds.

"They're fairly nervous birds" that wildly careen into traffic or other hard objects, like docks and trees at the lake, Ketley said. "They're like bowling balls with wings."

Most of the bird carcasses he's collected this fall had broken backs; his best guess is hawks at Pinto Lake and motorists near the sloughs startled the birds. So its unlikely the dead birds fell prey to disease, though state Fish and Game will do necropsies on the fowl.

Ketley attributed the high rate of bird deaths to a larger-than-normal population.

"My suspicion is we just have an extra large number of birds migrating," he said.

Debbie Diersch, a docent and volunteer with , said this week she hadn't heard about the dead coots, but would check with the nonprofit's expert birders.

Ketley advised people to just leave the coots alone. If you see the dark-colored water bird while out hiking a slough trail, walk slowly and methodically around the bird. Call the city public works/utilities customer service line at 768-3133 to report dead birds.

"They'll be moving along soon," he said.