Date: Fri, 4 Jul 2003 10:53:08 -0500 Reply-To: Maryland Birds & Birding Sender: Maryland Birds & Birding From: Richard Hollis Subject: Re: Bald Cardinals Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Bald Cardinals or Balding Cardinals seems to be a midsummer phenomenon. This is noticed most often on Cardinals and Blue Jays, although folks in the West have seen similar things on Scrub Jays. I wonder if we miss it on other species as it would be more difficult to notice on smaller birds. Although other causes are possible in individual cases, including abnormal moults*, dietary problems, in most cases the baldness is probably due to feather mites. Feather mites eat holes in the feathers causing them to break off. Canary breeders can be familiar with this. *One captive Blue Jay was noted to completely moult its head feathers, becoming bald, every summer, while another Blue Jay in the same persons care moulted head feathers normally [a few at time]. There is a small piece on the Project Feederwatch has some info including photos. http://birds.cornell.edu/pfw/AboutBirdsandFeeding/OtherStrangeBirds.htm#Bald-hea ded birds Gerry Rising, writes a wonderful column called Nature Watch for The Buffalo News. Some years ago he touched on this. http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~insrisg/nature/nw98/baldbirds.html Good Birding, Rick Hollis 3524 Cumberland Ridge Road NE North Liberty, IA 52317-9328 319-665-3141 ======================================================================= To leave the MDOsprey list, send e-mail to listserv@home.ease.lsoft.com with the following message in line 1: signoff mdosprey ======================================================================= =========================================================================