Bird Process Constantly Uses 100% of CPU

[le9508]

Hi all,
I have recently been experiencing an inconvenient and honestly infuriating issue on my Mac running Mac OS Sierra 10.12.6 where some 'bird' process just sits there at 100% CPU usage all the time without actually accomplishing anything. In the attached screenshot, you can see that the probable culprits are two files that are only a few kilobytes in size and yet are somehow unable to sync.

In looking into this issue, I found some posts about the same problem that mentioned running the command
brctl log --wait --shorten. However, when I try to run this, even with sudo, the specific name of the file is hidden with <private>, so I have found it impossible to identify which files are holding up the sync and presumably causing the high CPU usage from the bird process.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

[DeltaMac]

The "bird" process is part of iCloud's backup function.
You could probably go in to the iCloud settings, and turn off your iCloud drive, which should result in that process going away. That probably will delete some cache files used by iCloud, too, which may be the issue causing the high CPU from the bird process in the first place.
Restart your Mac, then turn on iCloud drive again (if you are using it.

 

[le9508]

Thanks for the reply DeltaMac.

I have tried your suggestions, but the same problem has reappeared and iCloud sync is stuck again. I have a feeling the problem is just a few troublesome files that for some reason refuse to sync, but I still can't identify which ones. Would you have any suggestions to find and delete those files?

The sync has been stuck as shown in the screenshot for about a day with no progress at all.

 

[mam17]

Thanks for the reply DeltaMac.

I have tried your suggestions, but the same problem has reappeared and iCloud sync is stuck again. I have a feeling the problem is just a few troublesome files that for some reason refuse to sync, but I still can't identify which ones. Would you have any suggestions to find and delete those files?

The sync has been stuck as shown in the screenshot for about a day with no progress at all. View attachment 710946

just navigate to ~/Library/Application Support/ and execute rm -rf CloudDocs <<<<<<<<< USE AT YOUR OWN RISK