Nearly 30 birds in outdoor aviaries at three different properties in Dunedin suburbs Corstorphine and Concord were found dead in their cages this week.
Their owners are concerned smoke from woodburners might be behind the deaths.
Jacqui Hellyer was horrified when, while checking the aviary at her Gilmerton St home on Monday, she discovered 15 of her 30 budgies were dead.
She initially thought a wintry blast at the start of the week may have been responsible, but her other birds were fine.
Now she wondered if something airborne may have been the cause.
She had owned birds at the same property for about five years and had never had anything similar happen.
A couple of days later, Crammond Ave resident Nicole Serong lost two rainbow lorikeets.
"They were fine the day before, showing no signs of illnesses."
Her mother, who lived nearby, had 10 cockatiels die on the same day.
She had contacted the Ministry for Primary Industries to see if any diseases were going around, but was told it was not aware of anything.
She did not know with 100% certainty what caused the deaths, but she wanted to remind people of the issues that could be caused by burning treated or wet wood.
Otago Regional Council compliance manager Tami Sargeant said the council had not been made aware of any air quality issues in the Corstorphine or Concord areas, but air quality could be impacted over winter by home heating.
If people had concerns they should contact the council, she said.
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Wood burners triple the level of harmful pollution particles inside homes and should be sold with a health warning, says UK scientists, who also advise that they should not be used around elderly people or children. The particles are the most harmful pollutants in wood smoke, but it also contains carcinogenic chemicals including benzene and formaldehyde.
PM is formed of tiny particles that can get into the lungs and blood and be transported around the body, lodging in the heart, brain and other organs. PM affects health in two ways: by being toxic or by providing a surface for transporting toxic compounds to where they can do harm.
Just as well the PM is still allowing woodburners to be used, otherwise there will be power poverty as well as all the other poverty in New Zealand.
Indeed? Last year around 50,000 elderly people reportedly died in the UK purely as a result of heat poverty - the actual figure is almost certainly much higher. Perhaps, as the leading cause, of this, overpriced electricity and the heaters that use it should come with a health warning too?
I have occasionally wondered whether the anti-log burner infobombs & pogroms are tacitly supported by those who might like to see an inconvenient competitor to electricity removed from the picture. It certainly seems to have gone a lot quieter on this front recently - Maybe as the potential impact of the growing fleet of E-vehicles on this country's electricity availability and price have begun to sink in. (An E-vehicle can triple a household's power usage, which will amount to a fat, happy and maybe 'log burner indifferent' future for our power industry).
Articles like this irritate me. I don't have a clue what killed these birds - and without a post-mortem by a professional, I don't believe that the owners or the ODT's reporters do either. In the absence of any evidence whatsoever, I would put log burners right down there along with little green men as a possible cause.
To save time, what other topics "like this" irritate?