Preventing avian pink eye in the cold

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research 1:44 Preventing avian pink eye in the cold

By:

Spencer Coppage

10 Feb 2025

Feeding birds in winter helps them survive the cold, but did you know dirty feeders can spread disease? Sara Teemer and Dana Hawley studied how bacteria causing pinkeye in birds survives in cold temperatures and found a simple solution—regular cleaning.

The system that we study is the host pathogen relationship between housefinches, which are a common backyard songbird that you can often see at bird feeders like this. And the pathogen is called mycoplasma gallisepticum, and it causes this mycoplasmal conjunctivitis, which is essentially a bird like version of pink eye. This particular pink eye bacteria was thought to not be able to live very long outside of a bird. But we found that cold temperatures really allow it to do so. Well, one reason we did this study is we know people really like to feed birds in the winter when they need that extra food the most. Our results suggest people can clean their feeders more often in the winter to help reduce the spread of the pathogen. If you take any kind of bleach wipe commercially available in the grocery store, and you wipe down the inner surfaces of these what we call the port where the bird is going to stick its head in to get food, the perches. If you just get those areas really well, just take a minute or two to wipe those down. It eliminates virtually all the viable bacteria. I personally have a bird feeder in my own backyard that I maintain because I think bird feeders provide benefits to both the birds who rely on them in the winter, but also they give people a lot of joy and connection with nature. Both birds and people can win when supplemental feeding is done responsibly.

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