In just two weeks, nearly a hundred corpses of pigeons were found in the streets of Coulaures, a village located in Dordogne. There is no question of poisoning, as Mayor Corinne Ducrocq initially feared. The birds are in reality victims of a disease which has not yet been able to be identified, but which is transmitted massively between different specimens, France Bleu Périgord reported this Wednesday March 6. According to the results of the first analyses, released this Thursday, it is not avian flu. The birds died of “proventriculitis with petechiae” due to a viral infection which has yet to be identified.
The corpses of the pigeons multiplied, notably under the windows of Odile, interviewed by the radio: “I picked up three in the flowerbed, then around the church, in the street behind… I I picked up more and more,” she explained. With neighbors, she set about collecting the corpses “to prevent children from touching them, or animals from coming to eat them”. According to the village resident, a neighbor’s cats “got sick” after eating one of the pigeons. Corine Ducrocq confirms to Le Parisien “that dogs and cats vomited”. This may have initially led to fears of poisoning.
Alerted by Odile, the mayor of the town requested an autopsy of four corpses, in order to identify the reasons for these dozens of deaths. Analyzes are underway, at the initiative of the Departmental Directorate of Social Cohesion and Population Protection, to find out exactly what virus the pigeons were victims of. Another mystery: the suspicious deaths of birds have stopped for several days, according to the mayor.