CITY FOCUS:

Workers at the Wetlands and Wildlife Care Center reported a recent rash of dying birds in Huntington Beach. No one is positive yet what killed them, but some involved said they suspected avian botulism.

Sick or dead sanderlings and western snowy plovers started appearing at 9:45 a.m. Thursday, center volunteer Sharon Weeks said. In all, 39 living birds were brought into the center by the end of Friday, but only four had survived by Monday. Those four were expected to live and be released by the end of the week.

The birds affected were shorebirds, those that dig their beaks into the sand to pick up worms, snails and other invertebrates. The tiny sanderlings are migrating south from hatching in the arctic, while the western snowy plover is listed federally as a threatened species because its habitat is threatened.

The afflicted birds showed up mostly on Huntington State Beach just north of the Santa Ana River, the center’s Wildlife Director Debbie McGuire said.

“The Coast Guard was looking at the Santa Ana River” as a possible source of the contamination, she said Friday. “The current is going north right now.”

Whatever is hurting these birds, it’s not likely the domoic acid produced by the toxic plankton Pseudo-nitzschia, she added. Shorebirds don’t eat fish, so they’re unlikely to be exposed to the toxin that killed hundreds of sea mammals along the coast this spring.

The center is sending out samples to be tested for pesticides, disease and other factors, McGuire said. With the avian influenza scare of the past few years, they must report any die-off of five birds or more to the state; however, the symptoms make McGuire suspect avian botulism, a paralytic disease caused by bacteria.

Workers tried their best to keep the birds alive, but not knowing the cause and dealing with weakened birds made it very difficult.

“We kept them warm with incubators, flush their system out with electrolytes and give them nutritional gruel through a feeding tube,” she said. “It’s hard on such small birds; at least on a pelican we can IV them to flush their systems out.”

The birds may be released sometime this week, though the federal protections on the western snowy plover mean the center has to wait for government approval.