All the birds dying out

I know not much about this BUT I would suggest you look into bald eagles in the 80's (or 70's?) (in America). What I remember (and I remember very little) there was a pesticide that caused the shells of the bald eagle eggs to be too thin to stay together. Basically all of the baby birds died before they could hatch. In this case if the core problem wasnt solved quickly, and there were no places that attempted to preserve the population in a controlled environment, and this was the only region the bird lived in, the bird species would die out once the last generation reached their life span.

It depends on the bird and the ecosystem. Birds can be important in seed dispersal, pollination (in some cases), predators and prey. So, anything that eats them or their eggs would start eating something else. Similarly, anything that they eat might multiply in number.

The eggshell example came to my mind too. The eagles were more susceptible because they were at the top of the food chain and so they ingested more of the stuff (I think it was DDT). I believe it was related to infertility in the birds too.

Also, what effects would it have on the ecoystem? I'm assuming insects and plants would be affected in a big way, but would it be to the point of certain plants dying out too?

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Removing all birds from the ecology would be a HUGE upheaval... birds eat tons of seeds, bugs, small animals. And they are in turn eaten by a variety of critters. Including humans, of course -- a world without chicken or turkey? No eggs? What are your poor going to be eating?

Imagine a world without cheesecake... it's got eggs in it.

And just imagine all the carrion lying around if there are no crows or vultures to eat it.

Could your MC be obsessed with just one specific kind of bird, which has vanished? That would both be more realistic and less traumatic for the ecosystem...

carlaviii said:

Imagine a world without cheesecake... it's got eggs in it.

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No! it's too early in the morning for such horrors!!!

Kenn said:

The eggshell example came to my mind too. The eagles were more susceptible because they were at the top of the food chain and so they ingested more of the stuff (I think it was DDT).

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From what I remember, studies since then have shown that DDT probably wasn't the cause. You might want to check into that before using it in a story, or make up a fictional chemical that would do something similar.

It's worth noting that losing all the birds could cause major problems for the human race. If I remember correctly, in the 60s Mao told the Chinese to kill all the birds they saw because they were eating crops, and then the insects the birds had been eating ate even more of the crops causing millions to starve.

You mean...I'm...deceased?

There was a case of massive crows dying. It proved to be an insecticide.

Birds have an oily/waxy coating on their feathers. It keeps them dry. When this coating was destroyed by an insecticide the crows got saturated and froze to death.

Might I suggest a massive uncontrollable chemical spill that might evaporate with water, thus pouring over the earth when it rained, destroying all the little birdie raincoats.

It would take a few years but it's a feasible cause of extinction.

movieman said:

From what I remember, studies since then have shown that DDT probably wasn't the cause. You might want to check into that before using it in a story, or make up a fictional chemical that would do something similar.

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I have a feeling it might have been associated with a metabolite rather than DDT itself. That makes sense if it is the predators that are most affected. That doesn't mean to say it is the major cause of a drop in numbers though.

The DDT thing was all about the chemical (and its metabolites) becoming concentrated in the apex predators due to bioaccumulation. This lead to eggshell thinning, and nearly killed off a number of raptor species.

As for killing off ALL birds, that would take an almost supernatural force. The diversity among bird species means it is unlikely for a single, naturally occurring disease to kill off everything. Even killing off 98% of all birds would leave more than enough to repopulate many species, even if it decimated the biodiversity of birds in general.

If it did happen, the effects on other animals would be tremendous. Any plants that relied on birds to spread seeds or pollenate flowers would die off. Insects and anything the birds preyed on would undergo a population boom, followed by a massive die-off once resources became scarce. And those are just the immediate effects. A massive disruption to so many ecosystems would result in some really strange re-balancing.

Furthermore, anything able to affect all species of birds would be promiscuous enough to kill off other animals as well. You'd probably be better off coming up with something that could cause a regional de-birding, giving the same appearance without all the caveats.

JayD

It could also be something that only 'effects' either the male or female birds, thus causing the end of said birds. Can not reproduce without them both. Or so I'm told.

Just something you might want to consider: Birds are dinosaurs. They are, in fact, the only dinosaurs to survive the KT event. If that didn't kill them...Well, you're going to need to figure out how whatever did kill them in your world didn't kill everything else. Birds are diverse enough that anything that would kill them off would kill off much of the other creatures on the planet.

A disease might do it, but you'll want to talk to a molecular or evolutionary biologist to figure out how that would work.

If the bird death happened quickly, like over six months or so, the results would be catastrophic as insect-eating birds can take as much as ten thousand insects per bird per week. If all of those insects live and reproduce.....

It would likely kill off most of the human race and severely reduce the number of non-aquatic species of mammals.

I used to keep a lot of poultry, and there are some problems which affect most species of birds to various degrees.

For example: housed poultry is very susceptible to fungal diseases, which causes aspergillosis in the birds and kills them very quickly. This is common in birds kept in dirty conditions, and killed a few of the rescue birds we took in. It's less common in freerange and wild birds, but a change in the fungal spores concerned could easily increase the severity for them.

Some parasites (bird-lice, for example) live happily on just about any kind of bird but don't transfer to mammals. Red spider mites too (although they live in poultry sheds and feed on the roosting birds at night, so aren't such an issue for wild birds). They can kill birds by making them anaemic through their blood-sucking. Then there's the parasite (which is found in earthworms) which causes Blackhead in birds: peafowl and turkeys will die from this one pretty quickly, while chickens are quite resistant. But all you need is a change in the parasite, and it'll wipe out whole colonies of birds.

When we have a wet spring, the grouse on the moors around us don't hatch many chicks and they're more prone to infection. If the winter that follows isn't cold enough, the infection levels increase and affect the following spring's chicks, and a second wet spring really has a bad effect. A few years ago we were reduced to having just four breeding pairs of grouse around the house, and usually there are too many to count.

I hope that's a help.

What about mutation of avian encephalomyelitis (AE) virus? It only affects birds and not mammals. It usually only affects young birds, but you could have a violent mutation that rapidly kills all birds.

http://www.avianweb.com/avianencephalomyelitis.html

It's happening anyway, just slow enough so we don't see it for what it is. Part of the ecological meltdown.

But don't worry, pigeons, starlings and English sparrows (actually a type of finch) will always be with us.

But for your book, a mutated form of an avian flu virus should do the trick. Captain Trips for our feathered friends.

Soccer Mom said:

What about mutation of avian encephalomyelitis (AE) virus? It only affects birds and not mammals.

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Yeah? What about it!!

brightlyiburn said:

Just something you might want to consider: Birds are dinosaurs. They are, in fact, the only dinosaurs to survive the KT event. If that didn't kill them...Well, you're going to need to figure out how whatever did kill them in your world didn't kill everything else. Birds are diverse enough that anything that would kill them off would kill off much of the other creatures on the planet.

A disease might do it, but you'll want to talk to a molecular or evolutionary biologist to figure out how that would work.

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Exactly. This is why I could see this being a major shock/point of conflict for the world. And if you wanted to go paranormal and make the cause supernatural....

carlaviii said:

Imagine a world without cheesecake... it's got eggs in it.

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Egg substitute! Anything for cheesecake!