birdtray on Beowulf is 1.5-1 but thunderbird on Beowulf has Breaks: birdtray (<< 1.7.0+ds-1~) so it won’t install with apt.

Are there any other methods to get it installed without compiling from source?

Or are there any alternative apps that people use to show thunderbird status in the panel notification area?

There are no bug reports in debian bug tracker for this so I’m wondering if anyone actually uses this apt package? Perhaps I will file a bug there if nothing else comes of this.