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[varangian]

By a quirk of worldgen my current fortress is in a goblin-free world so casualties have been minimal to date. The Grim Reaper's most frequent visits are to dwarves who manage to fly/teleport to the top of walls or towers then lose their magical ability and die of thirst. Despite periodical checks for such runaways I've lost a few that way. I thought I'd read somewhere that they're somehow teleported there by pet birds. Any way to stop this happening?

[katana]

Were you building/digging? You may have blocked off/ dug out their only exit.

[varangian]

No, these were long completed constructions. And they wouldn't have been able to get to such locations even if they had been building, they were on the tops of walls that had no stairs up to that z-level. The common factor was that a bird (not the same one) was also perched at the location where the dwarves died.

[Sphalerite]

Assign all pet birds to a pasture somewhere underground that they can't fly out of.  Or make sure all your walls and rooftops have access staircases leading back down.

[varangian]

Assign all pet birds to a pasture somewhere underground that they can't fly out of.  Or make sure all your walls and rooftops have access staircases leading back down.

That might work, although the varieties of domestic fowl seem to breed so swiftly that keeping them all under control might be tedious. But according to someone in this thread: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=82852.0 there's a bug that causes birds and dwarves to teleport to the top of walls. I was thinking that the dwarf had gone after his/her pet bird but perhaps they're just both there because of the same bug rather than a cause and effect thing.

[Sphalerite]

For what it's worth, I have never once seen a dwarf teleport on top of a wall, and I build a lot of above-ground structures and have poultry farms in most of my fortresses.  I suspect that the bug only takes place when you have a pet that can fly, rather than with just any flying livestock.  If that's the case you don't need to worry about breeding fowl, since the hatchlings will only become pets if you specifically designate them as available for adoption.

[Suihanki]

I've actually had the same weird problem. I was building an above-ground Keep for my entrance, and hadn't gotten around to making the ceiling for the first floor, so I just had some walls.

I went to go start the ceiling, and there was a dwarf up on the walls. Nothing could have knocked him up there, and there was never a ramp up there. This happened twice, but I don't remember if it was the same Urist McParkour...