Influence of bird feces to water quality in paddy fields during winter season

Thousands of migratory birds such as tundra swan came to the paddy fields for overwintering in recent years in the study area. They stayed in paddy fields during night time for sleeping and used around the fields as a feeding ground during day time. During the birds stay, it was observed that water pooled in the paddy fields gradually turned green and gave off a bad smell. In this study, we tried to estimate the influence of the bird’s feces to water quality in the paddy fields. The study area is in the southeastern portion of Matsue City in Shimane Prefecture, Japan. In several paddy fields, puddling procedure was executed after harvesting rice and then water was stored in the paddy fields during winter season. This is because of being easier of farming activities such as weeding next season and of avoiding using pesticide for weeding with rising of environmental awareness. Water in the paddy fields was collected once or twice a month from the target fields and analyzed nitrogen, phosphorus, and organic carbon in 2007. In the study in 2006, as water was sampled once a week and the changes in the water quality had been grasped, we paid attention to behavior of the birds in a day in the field investigation in 2007. The number of the birds was counted once an hour from visible 7 am to 6 pm once a month. In addition to this, fresh feces were sampled from the fields and analyzed the contents of nitrogen, phosphorus, and organic carbon in the feces. As results, average water qualities of TN, TP, and TOC from November 2007 to March 2008 showed very high concentrations compared with a river water concentration used as irrigation water. More than 70% of TN in the water was ammonia nitrogen. Moreover, comparing with a standard fertilizer amount of nitrogen and phosphorus for paddy fields during irrigation period, it was estimated that the amount of nitrogen excreted by the bird’s feces during the winter season was equivalent to the standard fertilizer amount and the amount of phosphorus was about 30% of the standard amount. From these results, it was concluded that feces and urine from the birds influenced a lot to the water quality in the paddy fields.