On the east coast of Florida, more than 250 birds have washed onto shores they’ve never seen. Now they’re in Gainesville, but they’ll never see that either.
Greater shearwater birds have been found dead on the east coast of Florida in places such as Fort Lauderdale and St. Augustine. This summer, they are being sent to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission to be analyzed in Gainesville.
Dan Wolf, an avian veterinarian with the commission, examined the greater shearwater birds’ carcasses.
Most of the dead birds are immature or less than a year old, Wolf said, but the species is not in danger of extinction.
“It’s unsettling,” he said. “Nobody likes to see dead birds. But as far as being highly unusual, I don’t think so.”
Greater shearwater birds are brown and gray and spotted and about the size of a typical sea gull.
Forming a figure-eight-shaped migration pattern from Canada to the British Isles to South America to the west coast of Africa, the birds glide over the Atlantic Ocean waves without a sound, said Andy Kratter, ornithology collections manager at the Florida Museum of Natural History.
Kratter said the young birds are simply running out of gas this year.
Hyta Mederer, a licensed rehabilitator at the Florida Wildlife Hospital in Melbourne, said the clinic would receive greater shearwater birds that couldn’t stand or open their eyes. She described them as “drooping.”
“A normal, healthy bird is going to try to run away from you, bite or fly away,” she said. “But these birds couldn’t do that.”
Mederer said the clinic rarely sees this species of birds, but received 102 in June alone.
Kratter said it’s hard to pinpoint what the precise cause of the deaths is because so little is known about the birds’ feeding habits. They only come onto shore to nest in the Tristan de Cunha islands in the south Atlantic Ocean between South America and Africa.
“This is not like a one-time thing,” he said. “Climate change or something like that can’t be blamed for this. This has to do with their food habits.”
Kratter also said more birds than usual may be washing ashore due to strong eastern winds in the area, which are pushing more greater shearwater carcasses ashore.
Regardless of the cause of the birds’ death, some of the bodies will end up at the Florida Museum of Natural History.
Kratter said 2005 was the last year the museum received a large number of greater shearwater birds for its collection, when it received about 100 from bird rehabilitation clinics across Florida. In 2010, the museum received 14, and it received five last year.
Wolf said the average number of birds found dead is about 50 to 60, but he has seen more than 1,000 some years at the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.
This year, there have been more than 250 reported dead, he said.
Kratter estimated this year the museum would get about 50.
