The young magpie in the picture below came into our care on Wednesday afternoon. He'd been sitting on the ground in someones front yard for three days and we got a call to go and pick him up. He seemed lively enough when Donna got him home but wouldn't eat.
Magpies, crows, ravens, butcherbirds and peewees all belong to the same family, family corvidae, as such they tend to all eat the same kinds of food, usually insects and grubs. This causes a problem, especially in the younger birds, because a lot of grubs and worms are the intermediate host for gapeworm, a nasty parasite that is usually fatal if not treated.
We get a lot of young crows and magpies in care at this time of year and we've got into the habit of automatically checking and treating for gapeworm. The poor little fellar in the picture above was too far gone when we got him and he died the next day. He had the worst case of it I've seen so far. If you look below his tongue, near the base of the beak, you can see what looks like vermicelli, that's the gapeworm.
It basically kills the bird by filling up their throat until they can't swallow food anymore and they starve to death. As young birds need lots of food while they're growing they won't last long if they can't eat. They might even still look in good condition just before they die. It's easy to treat if you get to it in time, but that often doesn't happen because the bird is already past it by the time someone notices something wrong and calls a carer, or takes it to a vet.
So if you're reading this because there's a young bird (of the feathered variety) that's been on the ground in your yard for a couple of days and you're concerned about it, get it to a vet as quick as possible. It may not be too late.
2 comments:
Do gape worms hatch?
We had a juv magpie that had many tiny little whitish worms in its mouth & died.
The gape-worm is the mature animal. They lay eggs, which get re-ingested by the bird. These then hatch and the bird ends up with even more worms. It's been many years since we last looked after magpies, but we used to treat the worms with something, I can't remember the name now. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't. It really depended on how badly infected the bird was when we got it.
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