Something's taking deadly toll on birds.

Byline: Winston Ross The Register-Guard

LINCOLN CITY - Bob Loeffel has a hobby that might be considered morbid: He counts dead birds.

This fall, however, his weekly walk along a 4.6-mile stretch of beach in Lincoln County produced a clue to a mystery that is stumping wildlife biologists along the West Coast.

In record numbers, young northern fulmars are turning up dead on beaches from Canada to Mexico. Loeffel and others who keep tabs in Lincoln County have counted more than 400 dead birds in the past two months alone.

Usually he finds 50 to 100 in an entire year.

Loeffel has since learned that thousands of fulmars have turned up dead all along the coastline, setting off a flurry of e-mails and phone calls among scientists from Alaska to California.

They're all trying to figure out why so many of the seabirds, which are a smaller cousin of the albatross, are dying - and what it means.

"It's important to know what the mortality is caused by," said Roy Lowe, refuge director for the state Department of Fish and Wildlife. "If it's induced by humans, we need to know how to correct that.

"We're all kind of scraping at the edges, trying to figure out what's going on."

If you haven't seen a fulmar, it's because they're rarely spotted alive on the coast. They're highly pelagic birds, meaning they spend most of their lives at sea, except to breed.

That's part of the cause for alarm, actually. If so many fulmars are showing up on land, it could mean massive numbers are dead in the ocean, said Scott Hatch, a research biologist with the U.S. Geological Survey in Anchorage.

"A week ago, I got word of around 800 live birds captured on beaches and in wildlife centers," said Hatch, who studies seabirds. Given that these emaciated birds weren't dead yet, "that's probably just the tip of the iceberg."

Some worry that man-made causes, such as plastic or toxins are to blame. Others dismiss the die-off as cyclical. But this year's death toll dwarfs any other on record in Oregon.

"It's still a mystery, really," Anderson said. "Maybe there's one type of food they depend on that has suddenly crashed."

Ten years before Loeffel retired from the state Department of Fish and Wildlife in 1988, he began taking a weekly survey of the beach in Lincoln County. After 26 years, he has some of the most thorough data on the West Coast, thus it's one of the best indicators, Hatch says, that this year's die-off is extraordinary. The highest number Loeffel previously reported was 172 birds in 1995.

The birds that Loeffel and others have found have been severely emaciated, likely caused by starvation. They are also young, most of them under a year old. The youngest birds typically have the toughest time migrating south from Alaska this time of year.

But this die-off is severe enough to suggest that something else is going on.

Researchers in California have performed necropsies (animal autopsies) on 178 of the dead fulmars. Ninety-six percent were born last summer, Lowe said. That indicates it isn't caused by disease, which would affect birds of all ages. And last summer, Hatch placed satellite transmitters on four adult fulmars, all of which are still alive in California, he said. That corroborates the theory that age is a factor.

While some of the birds that were tested have had plastic in their digestive tracts, that's common in seabirds.

Local bird watchers say they've spotted far more fulmars flying close to shore lately, which could indicated that the birds are simply showing up in greater numbers.

Recent years have been bountiful for many of the creatures - like salmon and crab - that thrive in the ocean, thanks to a strong upwelling of nutrients close to shore, which presents another mystery. If there's more food, it's strange for any bird to be starving.

"I think it's going to be tough to find the smoking gun," Lowe said.

All Hatch can do is guess, he said. Fulmars like to eat what's commonly known as lantern fish, he said. The fish light up and head toward the ocean surface at night. If the birds are starving - not even that's a certainty - it could mean something's wrong with the food supply.

"That's usually the case with seabird die-offs," Hatch said. "But why is it just fulmars?"

If there's something wrong with the lantern fish populations, it could be an indication ocean conditions are off kilter somewhere, Hatch said. If the die-off numbers increase, scientists will probably start talking about bigger-picture effects, such as global warming. But it's way too soon for all that.

"That becomes a more serious issue, if that's the case," Hatch said.

Winston Ross can be reached at [phone] or [e-mail].

NORTHERN FULMAR

This stocky ocean bird's name means "foul gull," because it spits an oil onto would-be predators.

Length: 18 inches

Wingspan: 42 inches

Bill: Thick and yellow with tube on top

Flight: Rapid wingbeats; glides on stiff wings

CAPTION(S):

A convalescing northern fulmar waits for a meal from senior aviculturist Todd Dunkirk at the Oregon Coast Aquarium in Newport.