Avian Flu?

[Jeff Reardon]

Steve Sanford's comment on the thread about Alaskan nest boxes caught my eye, and rather than divert that thread, I figured I'd start a new one.

What are folks around the country seeing for avian flu impacts on waterfowl? We had a pretty large mortality event on Canada geese and ducks. (Duck species not specified in media accounts I saw.

On social media I've been seeing regular accounts of bald eagles scavenging waterfowl carcasses--but of course that's normal in the winter.

The distribution so far seems heavily weighted to southern Maine and the coast, but that's also where waterfowl populations and people to trip over carcasses are concentrated this time of year.

More than 20 birds found on Ogunquit Beach likely died of avian flu

State officials warn that the risk for animals is high and urge residents to take precautions to limit the spread of the virus.

www.pressherald.com

 

[Scott Gilliland]

I'm not plugged in like I used to be. I've heard of mortalities of Canada Geese in Prince Edward Island, Pennsylvania and maybe Ontario this winter. I think I also heard of a die off of sea ducks (eiders and scoters) in the Nantucket area. I heard it third hand so not so reliable, but I don't think it was related to avian influenza, maybe West Nile virus.

 

[Paul Taylor]

Avian flu would kill the eagles that eat infected ducks too right?

 

[Jeff Reardon]

Avian flu would kill the eagles that eat infected ducks too right?

Certainly possible. I have not heard of any avian flu bald eagle deaths, though. I saw bald eagles twice growing up in Maine, both in fairly remote places. I now see three or four on my 30 minute drive to work every day, mostly scavening deer carcasses along the highway. It's common to see 30 or 40 when I take my trash and recyclables to the transfer station. I'm not sure if they are mostly scavenging in the trash in the landfill, or preying on the seagulls and rats that absolutely are eating trash. But seeing them fly around with plastic trash bags stuck on their feet takes a little of the romance away!

Edited to add--the Google machine tells me Maine and Vermont both had at least 2 bald eagles test positive for avian flu back in 2022, but don't see any reports of deaths here.

 

[Steve Sanford]

Steve Sanford's comment on the thread about Alaskan nest boxes caught my eye, and rather than divert that thread, I figured I'd start a new one.

What are folks around the country seeing for avian flu impacts on waterfowl? We had a pretty large mortality event on Canada geese and ducks. (Duck species not specified in media accounts I saw.

On social media I've been seeing regular accounts of bald eagles scavenging waterfowl carcasses--but of course that's normal in the winter.

The distribution so far seems heavily weighted to southern Maine and the coast, but that's also where waterfowl populations and people to trip over carcasses are concentrated this time of year.

More than 20 birds found on Ogunquit Beach likely died of avian flu

State officials warn that the risk for animals is high and urge residents to take precautions to limit the spread of the virus.

www.pressherald.com

Jeff~
As a long-retired biologist, I am no longer plugged in the the world of knowledge re bird flu. I do note that NYS now considers it a significant threat to birds and other wildlife - although still in the early monitoring stage.
https://dec.ny.gov/nature/wildlife-health/animal-diseases

More broader observations are my own, observing birds on the landscape throughout the seasons. I have seen a marked decline in virtually all bird life in my haunts over the past 3 or 4 years. News about HPAI in wild populations has been fairly regular in non-US news sources for several years now - with reports of big die-offs in a variety of birds. News coverage in the US was largely restricted to poultry flocks. However, since ir t first reported in humans (farm workers), I am seeing more and more reports of more and more species - accompanied by the information that such mortality has been observed and recorded - but not reported in the lay-audience news media.

My overall take on the well-reported declines in continental bird populations focuses on 3 major causes: truly systemic chemical pollution (as from industry, agriculture, human development); climate change effects - esp. viz. food resources and migration patterns; and avian influenza. My approach is not rigorous - nor ready for "thesis defense". I will say, though, that my sober assessment is shared by many of my friends in my demographic - who have been paying attention to the natural world in one capacity or another for about 7 decades.

All the best,

SJS

 

[Ronald Bock]

It will be interesting to see how many birds return this year and how many we've lost. Avian flu is very worrisome especially in areas where birds concentrate (refuges). Birds that raft up in large numbers (divers) may really get hit hard too. Should be interesting to see.

 

[benp]

I'm surprised I haven't seen anything on snow geese having an outbreak. That is one of the main concerns with their population boom that brought on the conservation season to try and lower the risk of a major die off from disease. Yet they seem to be doing fine through it?

 

[Steven Alexander]

Obviously anecdotal, but I haven't seen these large numbers of dead birds around me. I have seen sick and dying wild fowl though. Usually just one at a time. And I've witnessed that type of thing for many years. Several snows in Arkansas over the years that just acted weird. I have to assume they were sick by their behaviors.

If avian flu is a natural sickness, nature will do what nature does, and will keep right on humming along. If it's a novel natural sickness (I believe this strain of H5N1-HPAI is), it will kill off the susceptible ones of the species and leave a stronger population on the other side.

What I can't understand is why politicians/lawmakers/government officials think indiscriminately killing off millions of chickens is going to fix anything. Imagine killing off entire apartment complexes because just one person living in it got the flu. That's the same logic. Oh, and apparently only chickens over 8 weeks old can get it, because it's not affecting the meat chickens (6-8 week olds), just the laying hens.

I am fairly certain my father-in-law's chickens had it run through them this past fall. He had about 12 chickens die in a short span, all went from pretty normal, to lethargic, to dead, in a matter of hours to days, over a couple week span. He had around 90-100 chickens at the time and the rest didn't seem affected and haven't been since. That is speculation, as he never had them tested. It could have been any number of things that killed them.

We had a pretty large mortality event on Canada geese and ducks. (Duck species not specified in media accounts I saw.

May I ask; who is "we"? I assume you mean your state, just wondering.

 

[jode hillman]

I'm surprised I haven't seen anything on snow geese having an outbreak. That is one of the main concerns with their population boom that brought on the conservation season to try and lower the risk of a major die off from disease. Yet they seem to be doing fine through it?

There has been huge mortality events of snow geese in Pennsylvania at middle Creek Reservoir and also several other roost sites in the area.

Some of the largest were a few thousand birds at a time.

There were also several hundred bird events at prime hook and Edwin B. Forsythe National Wildlife Refuge Delaware and New Jersey respectively. Most of them occurred in the January to February timeframe.

 

[Richard Lathrop]

There has been huge mortality events of snow geese in Pennsylvania at middle Creek Reservoir and also several other roost sites in the area.

Some of the largest were a few thousand birds at a time.

There were also several hundred bird events at prime hook and Edwin B. Forsythe National Wildlife Refuge Delaware and New Jersey respectively. Most of them occurred in the January to February timeframe.

Prime Hook also had a die off of snow geese in February. It is also hitting the DelMarVa area poultry industry hard.

Snow geese dying from bird flu

Dead snow geese falling from the sky. It’s not a plot for a sci-fi movie; it’s actually happening in coastal areas of Sussex County. State officials have found dead or dying snow geese infected with avian influenza, aka bird flu. It’s normally...

www.capegazette.com

Rick Lathrop

 

[Dave Horvath]

We have seen several hundred Sandhill Cranes at our club and around the adjacent Kankakee Fish & Wildlife Area, here in in northern Indiana. Talking with the FWA property manager they have found ducks and geese as well.

 

[Brad Bortner]

Like Steve and Scott, I am retired and not in the mainstream anymore but I do follow avian flu issues. I believe that I have heard of a few examples where mortality has been high enough that managers are concerned about impacts at the management unit scale. Those would be cacklers breeding on the western Alaska, sandhill cranes breeding in the Great Lakes region and some segments of snow geese. Jeff, eagles and other raptors are dying from HPAI. I suspect we can consider HPAI H5N1 to be widely established in North America now and will likely persist in wild and domestic birds. It has been interesting to see the range of other non-bird animals susceptible to the disease. The swine cases are particularly concerning because humans share a number of influenzas with sine and a mutation of HPAI H5N1 and one of the swine/human variants could be our next pandemic.

Like you Jeff, I can remember seeing my first adult bald eagle. About 1972 or 73 on the shores of the Chesapeake. I was in the middle of lacrosse practice and one flew over the field. I stopped and watched the bird fly over head. Now on the Columbia River, they are present all year and super abundant during the eulachon run. I even have one the has a territory that includes my front yard.

 

[Scott Gilliland]

Like Steve and Scott, I am retired and not in the mainstream anymore but I do follow avian flu issues. I believe that I have heard of a few examples where mortality has been high enough that managers are concerned about impacts at the management unit scale. Those would be cacklers breeding on the western Alaska, sandhill cranes breeding in the Great Lakes region and some segments of snow geese. Jeff, eagles and other raptors are dying from HPAI. I suspect we can consider HPAI H5N1 to be widely established in North America now and will likely persist in wild and domestic birds. It has been interesting to see the range of other non-bird animals susceptible to the disease. The swine cases are particularly concerning because humans share a number of influenzas with sine and a mutation of HPAI H5N1 and one of the swine/human variants could be our next pandemic.

Like you Jeff, I can remember seeing my first adult bald eagle. About 1972 or 73 on the shores of the Chesapeake. I was in the middle of lacrosse practice and one flew over the field. I stopped and watched the bird fly over head. Now on the Columbia River, they are present all year and super abundant during the eulachon run. I even have one the has a territory that includes my front yard.

Hey Brad, It's been awhile, hopefully you are enjoying retirement. Like you I've been following avian flu... but, mostly for sea ducks. Eiders in the St. Lawrence Estuary, Québec were hit very hard in the initial outbreak in 2022 with mass mortalities on several large colonies. We've continued to put satellite tags on eiders and we've sampled all birds we've captured. Last winter we put out tags on eiders in Rhode Islands and there was a very high prevalence of HPAI in the birds we captured. There was also a mortality event nearby involving eiders and scoters.

There has not been a lot reported in Canada this year. Birds only started arriving in large numbers in the last 2-3 weeks. The Canadian Wildlife Health Cooperative maintains a very nice HPAI dashboard that summaries the samples they have run (https://www.cwhc-rcsf.ca/avian_influenza.php). There is a link that takes you to the dashboard, and you can select an area on the map, or there are a lot of different options for filter by bird group/species etc. Access to the filtering is not obvious and I highlighted a little arrow in the attached screen grab - you click on this and it will open up the filtering options.

 

[Richard Lathrop]

Like Steve and Scott, I am retired and not in the mainstream anymore but I do follow avian flu issues. I believe that I have heard of a few examples where mortality has been high enough that managers are concerned about impacts at the management unit scale. Those would be cacklers breeding on the western Alaska, sandhill cranes breeding in the Great Lakes region and some segments of snow geese. Jeff, eagles and other raptors are dying from HPAI. I suspect we can consider HPAI H5N1 to be widely established in North America now and will likely persist in wild and domestic birds. It has been interesting to see the range of other non-bird animals susceptible to the disease. The swine cases are particularly concerning because humans share a number of influenzas with sine and a mutation of HPAI H5N1 and one of the swine/human variants could be our next pandemic.

Like you Jeff, I can remember seeing my first adult bald eagle. About 1972 or 73 on the shores of the Chesapeake. I was in the middle of lacrosse practice and one flew over the field. I stopped and watched the bird fly over head. Now on the Columbia River, they are present all year and super abundant during the eulachon run. I even have one the has a territory that includes my front yard.

Brad,

I think it is only a matter of time before a swine/human variant appears.

Rick Lathrop