Many people love to feed the birds. It's very pleasing to watch all the little birdies flocking around the feeder, gratefully enjoying the luscious bounty of sunflower seeds or corn.
Birds really go for that sort of food. If you think about it, what with all the birds out in farming country, it's amazing that any of that seed ever makes it out of the growers' fields. Wonder why the birds didn't just eat it all up before the harvest?
Meet
Starlicide.
Starlicide is a brand name of DRC 1339, which is the chemical 3-chloro-4-methylbenzenamine hydrochloride. It's the only compound registered for use as a fully lethal, specific avicide in this country*.
The brand name comes from one of the substance's original uses: the killing of (non-native) starlings in livestock feedlots. But Starlicide has been used to kill many other species of birds in many other settings. A major current use of Starlicide is to kill the great masses of redwing blackbirds congregating in the sunflower fields that provide much of our packaged birdseed.
Starlicide is applied in the form of a laced bait, which is scattered about prior to crop ripening and harvest. The redwings eat the bait, and then die of kidney and liver failure. The poison is fairly slow-acting; the death process, counting from the ingestion of the fatal meal, can take up to three days.
Other birds that have nibbled the poisoned food may also sicken and die. Icterids are especially susceptible to this toxic chemical, but Starlicide can kill other sorts of birds too, if they eat enough of it.
Starlicide is not the only bird-control measure used in the process of getting the sunflower seeds to market. Farmers in the Great Plains have also used glyphosate to kill the marsh plants that redwings nest in (other growers simply bulldoze the plants). Additionally, other pesticides, including certain rodent baits, can be used to kill birds -- if one deliberately ignores the packet instructions and the applicable laws.
The
USDA has long toyed with the idea of doing a mass Springtime poisoning of redwings, because they believe that this would be very effective in reducing crop losses. They haven't figured out yet what do about the estimated 150
tons of bird carcasses that this would generate.
Anyhow, that's just one chapter in the secret history of your birdfeeder. To feed the birds, you gotta kill a bunch of them first.
But I'm sure that in the final analysis, it's really all tabby's fault...
* Unless you count the (even worse!) organophosphate
fenthion, whose maker -- Bayer -- is no longer selling fenthion-containing products in the United States. Offhand, I'm not sure whether the registration was withdrawn as well.
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