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A man who shoots at birds to keep them off a toxic pit [video]
11–20 of 59 posts
Re: A man who shoots at birds to keep them off a toxic pit [video]
#12Earlier quoted context omitted.
Migrating birds stopping to rest in water tend to drink the water. Once inside the body, if the water is too acidic, it begins breaking down cell walls and denaturing proteins. These actions are analogous to cooking.
Except that the photos of injury they showed were damage to the duck's feet - i.e. not part of the digestive tract, and very much part of the body that's submerged in water the entire time the bird floats on a lake.
Good catch, so they are probably ‘cooked’ from both ends topologically.
Re: A man who shoots at birds to keep them off a toxic pit [video]
#13I'm wondering why they don't fire up the original pump system that drained the pit back in the mining days?
The filtration and pumps in Butte are suprisingly world class.
Re: A man who shoots at birds to keep them off a toxic pit [video]
#14Earlier quoted context omitted.
Migrating birds stopping to rest in water tend to drink the water. Once inside the body, if the water is too acidic, it begins breaking down cell walls and denaturing proteins. These actions are analogous to cooking.
Except that the photos of injury they showed were damage to the duck's feet - i.e. not part of the digestive tract, and very much part of the body that's submerged in water the entire time the bird floats on a lake.
They don’t extract those birds at the moment of death, it’s likely most of that damage occurred after death.
So sure, every part of bird exposed to the acid is causing harm, it’s just death is caused from the inside rather than damage to the birds skin. Further it’s likely their exposure is mostly from drinking thus inside out.
Re: A man who shoots at birds to keep them off a toxic pit [video]
#15Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wondered the same thing. I imagine it's because it used to pump the water out before it became toxic from absorbing the metals.
That was my first thought too. They are spending so much money on gear and employing someone full time - wouldn't it be cheaper to just drain it? There must be a reason they aren't doing it. Also, he can't be there 24 hours - what happens if a bird lands on the water at night?
I assume the reason is that draining it just moves the toxins elsewhere. No one else wants to drink this stuff or have it in their surface water either.
Re: A man who shoots at birds to keep them off a toxic pit [video]
#16So are they going to have this person or persons man the pit indefinitely? I see they have some automated measures like the propane cannon but at some point shouldn’t they just put a net on top of the whole pit to keep birds off it?
Re: A man who shoots at birds to keep them off a toxic pit [video]
#17It's frustrating that the description of the video and the first few seconds of the video both establish a narrative of "acid cooking birds from the inside out " if they spend a few hours in the water, which makes absolutley zero sense. At no point in the entire video is that claim revisisted or explained.
I live near this site (well, 120 miles away, which in Montana is "near"). They scare the birds away because in the past a ton of birds have died after landing on the water. I don't know the mechanism but it's a real thing.
Re: A man who shoots at birds to keep them off a toxic pit [video]
#18So are they going to have this person or persons man the pit indefinitely? I see they have some automated measures like the propane cannon but at some point shouldn’t they just put a net on top of the whole pit to keep birds off it?
Or float those plastic balls [1] on it, like they do for some reservoirs to stop evaporation. It'd take a lot of them, but that'd work and could be both cheaper and more permanent.
Re: A man who shoots at birds to keep them off a toxic pit [video]
#19The interesting thing that this video does not show you, is that they are likely killing some of the animals on purpose.
A USDA Wildlife Management employee once gave a presentation on various pest animal control techniques to my class of wildlife science students. He spent some time controlling birds at airports.
Birds learn that noises do not kill them. Eventually they ignore the noises. To fix this, every once and a while he had to make a kill with the stimulus. Some of the techniques in the video may not require occasional kills. I would love access to their logs. It would be interesting to see if indeed they are making occasional kills and how long it took to find the optimal interval.
Re: A man who shoots at birds to keep them off a toxic pit [video]
#20So are they going to have this person or persons man the pit indefinitely? I see they have some automated measures like the propane cannon but at some point shouldn’t they just put a net on top of the whole pit to keep birds off it?
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