The death of a whole peregrine family is so sad. Especially from a nest site so
well publicised it was used to lure me to Oz.
I hope DSE will keep us informed about the incident because, as most
subscribers appreciate, I'm a meddling amateur who knows a little about lots
and am certainly not a toxicologist.
But I have been worried about second generation (cumulative) anticoagulants
like Brodifacoum ("Talon" etc.) because of their known effects (eg. John
Young's sugar cane owl). It's possible a lethargic Black-shouldered Kite in our
SE Melbourne foreshore was suffering from this as one was photographed feeding
on a rat in an area where there had been an unusually high no. of rat deaths.
But they are cumulative poisons and so would not produce a group of
simultaneous deaths like those of the Peregrines ?
It would have to be something fast-acting like Strychnine. A few years ago
there were repeated sudden deaths of numbers of Silvereyes and Blackbirds in a
nearby garden but the authorities never tracked down the source. Could it have
been in fruit ?
Michael Norris
Bayside Friends of Native Wildlife
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