The bald eagle and snow goose were killed by the bird flu.
Jeff Goulden/Getty ImagesA bird flu outbreak in the United States may cause trouble for poultry farmers who have been doing their best to control the outbreak in their flocks.
Chicken and turkeys have been killed to prevent the spread of the disease. Seven years ago, a similar bird flu outbreak burned itself out.
This particular flu virus can be passed on to poultry farms by hanging around in populations of wild birds. While chickens and turkeys quickly die from the virus, some birds can carry it for a long time.
Scientists think that the virus was brought to North America by wild birds. More than 40 wild bird species in more than 30 states have tested positive. This strain of bird flu has been found in many animals.
It is surprising how widespread it is in North America.
As the virus moves across the country, it will encounter new animal species that could get it. The flu viruses that are already circulating in the U.S. will be able to mingle with this pathogen.
Richard Webby, a flu researcher at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, says they don't know what that means for the virus.
The risk to humans is low so far.
Public health experts are watching for signs of genetic changes that could allow the bird flu to move into humans.
Todd Davis is an expert on animal-to-human diseases at the CDC.
The virus doesn't have the same genetic features that have been associated with other bird flus. An elderly person in the United Kingdom who lived in close quarters with ducks was the only person known to have contracted the bird flu.
More than 500 people in 25 states have been monitored by the CDC for the health effects of being exposed to birds. A few dozen people developed flu-like symptoms, but none of them were positive for this virus.
Bird flus like this one are common in Europe and Asia. They are concerned about the possibility of these viruses posing a threat to American birds.
Chickens and other fowl died on a farm on the island of Newfoundland, Canada in December of 2021. The bird flu had made it across the Atlantic.
Bryan Richards, the emerging diseases coordinator at the U.S. Geological Survey's National Wildlife Health Center, says that it was a heads up that it was going to North America.
In January, government officials announced its arrival in the U.S. after a wigeon duck in South Carolina tested positive. The last time a dangerous bird flu entered the country, Richards says, the number of instances where we picked that particular virus up in wild birds was very, very limited.
The bird flu virus is being detected in sick and dying birds all over.
David Stallknecht, a researcher with the University of Georgia, says the outbreak in the wild bird population is more extensive than in the past.
Waterfowl and raptors eat dead bodies.
More than 1,000 lesser scaup ducks have died in Florida. In New Hampshire, about 50 Canadian geese died. Wildlife experts have seen mass die-offs in snow geese.
Black vultures and bald eagles are two of the species that are likely to have been exposed to the disease by consuming the carcasses of the ducks.
It is not known how much of a toll this virus will take on American bird species.
In Israel, when this virus hit an area where about 40,000 common cranes had gathered for the winter, they lost a reported 8,000 of these birds over the course of a couple weeks.
Chickens and turkeys raised by the poultry industry have suffered the most deaths.
More than 50 million birds were killed by the bird flu in two years, costing the industry billions of dollars. The month of April had the greatest number of cases.
The director of research programs for the U.S. Poultry and Egg Association says she is holding her breath this month.
Heard says the virus can get from wild birds into poultry. Since the last outbreak, the industry has worked to educate farmers about how to protect their flocks.
She says that the virus can get tracked into bird houses on boots or inadvertently moved from farm to farm on vehicles, because wild migratory waterfowl are always flying over the top.
The last major outbreak saw a lot of spread of the virus from farm to farm. Instead, there are more isolated cases that may be related to wild birds bringing the viruses to farms and backyard flocks.
Some scientists think that this virus is likely to stick around in wild bird populations, so poultry farmers may need to learn to live with it.
I hope this isn't the case. Ron Fouchier, a researcher at the Erasmus Medical Center in the Netherlands, hopes that the U.S. will die off soon, and that the virus will go away again.
Farmers in Europe have had to kill more than 17 million birds.
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