Polio-like virus affecting Rainbow Lorikeets

0 Comments read Environment & Development, Health & Science
Photo Credit: © Neena Bhandari

By Neena Bhandari

Sydney, 30.07.2001 (WFS): A mysterious and devastating polio-like virus is affecting Rainbow Lorikeets in Australia. The bright hued, gregarious bird with a distinguishing blue head is unable to stand, fly or perch on contacting the disease.

Similar to Poliomyelitis or infantile paralysis in humans where a virus affects the nervous tissue, in the birds too, part of the nervous system is affected causing symptoms of paralysis.

With virtually nothing known about the `suspected viral polioencephalomyelitis’ in the birds, Dr Rosemary Booth, a veterinarian at the University of Queensland in Brisbane and Dr Karrie Rose, a pathologist at the Taronga Zoo in Sydney are carrying out intensive research to unravel the mysterious virus affecting the Rainbow Lorikeets.

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Sydney Calling

0 Comments read Cricket & Sports, Features

By Neena Bhandari

Sydney, 01.09.2000 (The Pioneer Column): On the millennium eve, watching the `river of flame’ from across the Westminster Bridge in the slush and rain, we had thought the spectacular show of fireworks in Sydney had really given London a run for its money.

Months later as I write this basking under the bright Sydney skies overlooking the blue waters, the city is all dolled up to host the greatest sporting festival in the world, rolling out expensive red carpets and chilling champagne for its multitude of guests pouring in each day.

Hearts of past greats and future heroes burn with pride as they carry the Olympic Games torch, for most only once in their lifetime, through villages and cities of this vast continent country.

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Ornithologists turn match-makers for Siberian Cranes

0 Comments read Environment & Development

By Neena Bhandari

Bharatpur, India 10.02.1997 (IPS): Dodging rockets in Afghanistan and poachers in Pakistan, three Siberian cranes — India’s most famous winged visitors — touched down last November at their winter home here in the Ramsar Wetland Site of Bharatpur in the western Indian state of Rajasthan.

The Siberian cranes or Grus Leucogeranus were the first since 1994 to make the perilous 6,000-km long journey from south of the Arctic Circle, through Central Asia to India. In the 1960s, at least 200 used to regularly winter in Bharatpur’s famed Keoladeo National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

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