Is Washing Soda Bad For Birds?
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What incident prompted the discussion about washing soda and birds?
We receive a lot of correspondence to Mooney Goes Wild every day, mooney at rte.ie, and I do my best to answer your emails. If I can't answer them myself, we feel them out to our experts. And sometimes, just sometimes, we call you to answer your query in person, as we did during the week with Bernie Dennehy.
Thanks for calling. Last week, I washed a small patio and I purposely used washing soda, washing crystals, because I thought they'd be safer for the worms. and the birds. So he did use a lot of water. And anyway, that evening when I'd all done, I noticed the blackbird, I think it was a blackbird, got an orange beak and kind of a nice shiny black plumage. He came over and he took a lot of worms. He was taking loads of worms in his mouth. And he went away, that was it. Then on Wednesday morning, I came down to have my breakfast. I looked at the back and I saw a dead bird in the garden. I'm here about 10 years now, I'd never seen a dead bird. It looked like a female, from your book that I have, it looked like a female blackbird.
And it didn't look like as if a cat had got it because the day before I noticed she was kind of, sitting on the lawn. She wasn't, and she was kind of just sitting. She wasn't either, but they were hopping with their legs and kind of walking along. They were just sitting and she kind of slightly just went over to the side. So I was wondering afterwards, was it the washing soda that caused her death?
Where exactly are you, Bernie?
I'm living in Cork.
And this has never happened before?
I've never seen it. I've never seen, I'm here 10 years in this house and I've never seen a bird dead in the garden, just lying flat on her face is down. This is sleeping, I suppose, just, but I've never seen it. He seems to be a resident. The other bird, the blackbird seems to be a resident. I noticed when I was doing my gardening, come over, as I was mowing the lawn or cutting, he come over and he kind of hop around beside me and I suppose waiting for the worms.
Is washing soda harmful to birds according to the experts?
And he, I don't know if he was taking all the worms that evening, Saturday evening and bringing them back somewhere. I was wondering, did he feed them to the female? And then did she die? She's dead. I saw her, she was dead, but I can't, he's not here anymore. I can't, I haven't seen him since.
Well, certainly from your description, that's a perfect description of a male blackbird. So I'm confident that you've got the right species there. And the fact that he was collecting those worms himself rather than eating them just straight away is a sure sign that there was a nest nearby. He would have either been bringing them back to the female on the nest or possibly to the chicks in the nest. Blackbirds would have chicks out, their first brood would be out already at this time of year. And in fact, what happens is when the first breed of chicks has left the nest, the female will incubate the second lot of eggs and the male exclusively then takes care of the first brood for a few weeks and feeds them and shows them how to be blackbirds.
Now, it can be quite difficult to tell the difference between an adult female blackbird and a young juvenile blackbird that's just out of the nest, especially at a glance and especially if it's young. If it's dead. So it could have been the adult female. It's possible it was one of the youngsters. And the sad fact is young birds, they die for all sorts of reasons. There's no particular reason to think that it was the washing soda that played a role in that. Can I ask you, was it the first time that you tried washing with soda crystals or have you done it before?
No, it wasn't. I'm here 10 years and I used to, for the first five years, I did use it. And then for the last three, then for three, because it's kind of very hard to use it. So then I used bleach for the last three years. I just did not want to do that anymore. I didn't think it was good for the worms. So for the last two years now I've been using, so I went back to using washing soda. So I've been using it for the first, let's say, five years.
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Chapters
6 chapters
1
What incident prompted the discussion about washing soda and birds?
0:09–2:03
2
Is washing soda harmful to birds according to the experts?
2:03–3:46
3
What evidence suggests a window collision as a cause of bird death?
3:46–5:43
4
How does washing soda compare to other cleaning agents for the environment?
5:43–6:34
5
What behaviors did the blackbird exhibit before its death?
6:34–8:26
6
What are the common causes of bird fatalities in urban areas?
8:26–9:56