Laura Erickson's For the Birds

Wednesday, November 7, 2007

Scary news on the Lesser Scaup front


Today's Duluth News-Tribune has scary news from Bemidji, near the headwaters of the Mississippi River:

Dan Markham and Noel Hill of Duluth were setting up to hunt ducks on Lake Winnibigoshish near Deer River on Saturday when they noticed a dead bluebill on shore. A quick walk along the shore turned up another three dozen dead bluebills...

Cordts and other DNR employees collected about 1,000 dead bluebills from a stretch of shoreline on Friday. In the time it took to collect about 900 of those birds, another 30 to 50 had died in the same stretch.

“This is potentially pretty bad because of this snail,” Cordts said. “The trematode is likely brand new to the system. It could be along the whole stretch of the Mississippi River and could get into other lakes and into other species. It’s way too early to speculate a lot.”

“We were just heartbroken,” Markham said. “It’s depressing.”

...

Read the whole story.