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Becoming quite a cause for concern, the level of infection in this species, make sure you wash your bird tables and feeders down with disinfectant and boiling water weekly out there folks.

For those interested , this is caused by a pappiloma virus, this virus enters occassionally through a small wound but is more usually injested as infected tissue , swells the individual cells on the legs and other bodily areas, but has a preference for highly keratinised areas (its no coincidence fish and lizards have their own variant of this virus, for they too are covered in keratin) and these highly expanded cells cause crusts and nodule-like growths. These are literally individual cells that the virus has caused to swell up to 400 times normal size. Its very much like being covered in and penetrated by hundreds of little hard warts. Net result, circulation is eventually lost in the limbs over many months, secondary infections or debilitation eventually claim the birds life. There is unfortunately no known cure

This virus should not be confused with bumblefoot, a common bacterial infection of the feet, often staphylococcal strains, spread by fecal material, dirty perches etc, which can be cured by antibiotic injections and topical antibiotic creams, combined with rigorous captive hygeine. It too is spread by bird table contact.

Chaffinch (along with pigeons, many birds of prey and most of the corvids - in fact in my time in animal rescue I never saw a bird species that couldnt get it )also regularly suffer frounce/canker/trichomonad infections. These basically cause respiritory and predigestive problems and is by far the mostdeadly of the three infections in terms of infection rate and death vs time.This again is spread by close contact, water baths, and is often initially ingested into the crop by mouth on infected foods. There is a treatment, various antiprotozoans like metronidazole can be force fed into birds or given in water, but for treatment to be successful treatment must be administered very early. By the time the infection is pronounced with strong smelling breath and cheesy secretions in the throat and lungs and crop, often its too late to save the bird, and for larger birds who may find the condition more survivable, secondary antibiotic therapy would probably have to be considered.

The one thing all these diseases have in common- dirty bird tables, perches, and old seed left around will increase levels of transmission, so when feeding your birds, clean everything at least once a fortnight, and do bird baths weekly at least. If you ever see an infected bird like the one above in your garden, cleanup must begin.

Trigene is often the professionals weapon of choice, though milton baby fluid, dettol etc all works as well. The ultimate weapon is of course a 5% bleach solution, pretty much nothing survives alkali that strong, but birds can be affected badly by the fumes of bleach and other non-ionic surfectants, so when bleaching stuff, rinse very well, and give a couple of days for the fumes to go before putting bird feeder items back in service.

Remember also that dehydration is your friend when it comes to killing bugs, small permeable perches (not plastic obviously) or metal feeders could be roasted on a low heat in an oven for an hour, and remember just hosing stuff down does not count as cleaning, if you keep all the wooden stuff in your garden wet with daily hosing and you could actually increase chances of infection. Stone baths should becleaned left to go dry occassionally, you can always put a bowl out temporarily if the birds have an urgent need for water. If you want to kill bugs, the theme is clean and dry, not a bit cleaner and perpetually moist.

Steam cleaners are good though and if you feed a lot of birds a good hot one is worth the investment, gets the bird crap off a treat, and of course will kill some germs. Sunlight UV is also your friend, it kills most bugs in hours when conditions are dry.

So this is after the kill & during clean-up. The killroom is full of bloodspatter as is the kill surface. The knives are cleaned and packed away. Just one pesky hand to wrap and put in the black bag. Some of the plastic sheets in the corner (you can never have enough of those). The victim pics are also covered in blood. Used 2 different red paints to try and imitate blood drying vs wet blood.