Florida veterinarians manage migratory mortality It’s a long,
hard journey from South Africa to Canada. By plane the trip on
South African Airlines from Cape Town, South Africa, to Halifax,
Nova Scotia, takes three flights, all day and costs more than
$2,000 a seat. The greater shearwater--an Atlantic sea bird--
makes the more-than-9,000-mile trip every year. But some birds
don’t make it. Last week, the Florida Fish and Wildlife
Conservation Commission reported 254 recorded deaths as the
colonies of birds made their way north over the Atlantic Ocean.
“They’re migratory; they don’t even stop here,” says Dan Wolf,
DVM, a veterinarian with the Florida Fish and Wildlife
Conservation Commission. “They fly north to Canada and basically
do a figure eight in the Atlantic staying off shore the whole
time.” Last week some of these birds--both deceased and in an
extremely weakened state--began washing up on Florida’s eastern
shoreline. St. John’s Veterinary Hospital in St. Augustine,
Fla., started seeing birds on Tuesday