Botulism Suspected in Duck Deaths

About 100 dead birds, mostly ducks, were removed from Twin Lakes Park in Garden Grove this week, apparently killed by a toxic strain of avian botulism created by low oxygen in the water, officials said.

Three seriously ill ducks were taken to the Wetlands and Wildlife Care Center in Huntington Beach. A dog that jumped into the lake also was reportedly ill.

“We’re doing all we can for these ducks, but it’s going to be close,” said Greg Hickman, the care center’s director.

“This apparently was a highly toxic level of botulism.”

Botulism is common in Orange County lakes and streams in summer, Hickman said, but becomes toxic only when water is extremely low in oxygen because of stagnation or too much waste. Waste builds from fowl overpopulation. Hickman discounted earlier reports that the waste came from too much bread fed to the ducks by visitors.

“We don’t encourage feeding them bread because it has no food value to them,” Hickman said. “We’ve seen ducks starve to death while eating bread. But bread was not the problem in this case.”

Visitors to the park, just north of the Garden Grove Freeway off Haster Street, began noticing ducks dying a few days ago.

The ducks, mostly mallards, are what are known as dabblers because they get their food from the muck at the bottom of the lake, Hickman said.