NOTE: House Finch Disease Survey no longer is operating as an independent project as it was originally, but when we participate in Project FeederWatch or some other projects, there’s a space to indicate whether any of the finches we observed had House Finch Disease.
House Finch eye disease is a form of conjunctivitis caused by a bacterium known as Mycoplasma gallisepticum. Tracking this disease helped scientists better understand the disease process in general, not just as it has affected bird populations, but for other species (including humans) as well.
When the project first began, I didn’t see any birds that appeared to have the disease. I still submitted my results, though, since knowing about the absence of birds or of birds with disease is just as valuable information as knowing how many birds are affected.
After years of recording healthy birds and sending in the results (which at that time meant snail-mailing the results), I found some birds with the disease starting in the
I have to admit I was beginning to wonder whether it was worth bothering with this project after so many years of never seeing the disease, but now I’m glad I had been submitting the data. I suspect that these positive disease findings are much more valuable against the backdrop of all those negative results than they would have been otherwise.
Despite its name, I’ve seen goldfinches with the disease as well as one house sparrow that also appeared to have the disease.
As of April 2011, I had still noticed house finches with the disease. For the past few years, though, I haven’t seen any birds with the disease. BUT I have seen fewer house finches — probably not a coincidence since the disease probably affected the population.
Reflections
The question is not what you look at, but what you see.
~ Henry David Thoreau, 1817-1862