Shutter those bird feeders

Shut down your bird feeders, Northern Californians, because authorities warn that they may be conduits for salmonella that kills pine siskins, a little finch.

State laboratories detected the bacteria in a “few hundred” dead birds in Nevada City, Eureka and Santa Cruz County. Salmonellosis can spread to domestic pets and cause diarrhea, fever and abdominal cramps in people.

The state Department of Fish and Game asks people in conifer country from Santa Cruz to the Nevada and Oregon borders to remove feeders until early March. The brown-and-yellow birds eat seeds that could be tainted with feces carrying the bacteria.

-- Ashley Powers