Field Observations -- Are you seeing a kill of native birds? (Avian Flu?)

This is to follow up on field observations of wild birds killed by avian flu. What are you seeing?

I pulled this out of the "Egg Prices" thread https://permies.com/t/273408/Egg-Prices:

Mk Neal wrote: We’re seeing that with wild birds here too, a huge number of dead mergansers washed up on the lakeshore.

Wow. I'm also worried as hell. Where are my wild birds this winter? I'm not finding the bodies in the snow, but dammit I'm missing all my winter buddies that buoy my spirits -- chickadees, downy and hairy woodpeckers, finches -- there's next to nobody at the seed feeders or the suet feeders even when it's dangerously cold. I've never seen any thing like it in my whole life. Twilight zone. Cue the music.

The birds I see right now are Blue Jays, Ravens (overhead) , Pileated Woodpeckers, hundreds of Bohemian (I think) Waxwings at our massively productive Mountain Ash trees, and a few wintering Juncos. And many Grouse, also enjoying the fruit bounty.

Maybe the rest of the winter crew got a better offer down the road.  I sure hope so. We had a massive vigorous hatch and now they're gone.

The only dead birds we've seen were predated - we've got lots of hawks and owls.

We've got lots of Juncos, and a variety of what I call LBB's (Little Brown Birds). The hummingbirds are starting to call also.

Locally, the word on the street is that avian flu is being transmitted by waterfowl - which fits with the comment about Mergansers.

We've been low on insects, which means that our insect eaters are likely looking elsewhere. It seems early for chickadees - they seem to pass through a bit later.

We have a large population of band tailed pigeons on our homestead. They spend a lot of time interacting with chickens and turkeys at the neighbors' places.  Lots of Red Headed Nuthatches and a lot of ravens. I daily work in our forest, with the birds about me.

We see lots of seagulls, Osprey, and other sea birds daily on our walk along a remote beach with huge piles of driftwood. Lots of birds down there.

I've seen only one dead bird, a goose. It looked like a healthy animal that had hit a cliff wall.

We all know that animal populations are cyclic, often on asymmetrical periods. I haven't heard of anything to suggest that mass wild avian populations are dying off in North America, and haven't seen any evidence of this- but please let me know if I am simply ignorant on the situation.

I do see that on the FDA's  "Detections of Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza in Wild Birds" that the collection date of the samples is all over the board, with many of the positive tested birds collected in 2024.
I also see the FDA is using real-time RT PCR testing for this. Recent scholarship on that suggest that real-time RT PCR  is not a dependable diagnostic tool.

Again, I could be ignorant. If anyone is seeing or hearing about mass bird death, please let me know.

EDIT- I tracked down the "huge number of dead mergansers" incident.  200 or so birds, very concerning, but the deaths being caused by EA H5 (2.3.4.4) viruses is just an assumption.

I may be ignorant also -- the incredible silence outside my windows is measurable and indisputable. The cause is unknown. No predators could account for this.

Douglas Alpenstock wrote:I may be ignorant also -- the incredible silence outside my windows is measurable and indisputable. The cause is unknown. No predators could account for this.

Well, whatever the cause, I am sorry this is happening, and I hope the bird populations bounce back immediately.
Birds are wonderful.

I’m seeing a good number of lethargic doves. People have been saying that the doves are acting slow, failing to get out of the way of automobiles.

We have had enormous flocks (thousands) of robins and starlings this winter.
They were our entertainment up until a week or so ago at dawn and dusk.
They roosted in trees along the creek here and edges of the neighborhood.
In the coldest weather they flew in and took awhile to settle in the trees and at dawn flew straight away in huge lines of birds.
The warm week though, in the evenings, they did their murmurating thing for up to an hour at a time ..beautiful!  https://birdfact.com/birds/starling/starling-murmuration

During that time our cats killed at least 4 robins and we saw a few dead robins, for no apparent reason, on the streets.
Have not seen the flocks lately.
I only have short videos of this...might have to dig out my youtube account in order to post them here?

edit to add a photo:
the best I can do is a still from a video...this is only a fraction of the birds and more distant than most days. Sometimes the murmuration was close overhead and filled the sky.

I was in a meeting yesterday where a veterinarian with our state's Board of Animal Health gave a short talk about the bird flu. She said that small birds carry the flu around some, just by having it on their feet and so on but that there isn't much evidence they are sick with it themselves. It sounded like water birds are the primary victims and spreaders and she reported a big die off of sand hill cranes a few counties west of where I live. Some water birds apparently can have it and carry it but not be all that sick themselves, others die from it. I haven't seen any sick or dead birds myself.

We don't have large bodies of water here, except for the river but water birds have never congregated on the river like they do in lakes and swamps. We do have Canadian geese that live here year-round, and our resident population of Canadian geese is very much less this year. Until this year hundreds of them would land each morning and graze in the field behind my office, this year almost none. The big flocks that fly over, one direction or another, are much smaller too.

Still, I'm seeing lots fewer small birds too. If it isn't flu then it's something else and I think it's something else because they have been declining for longer than just this year. I have a small garden pond with a pump and make sure to keep a spot ice free for the birds. Used to be, if it is very cold as it was for a while this year, we have tons of birds and lots of kinds coming to drink, way more than come to the feeders, but this year almost none. Except for titmouses, there are a lot of them, but chickadees, cardinals, nuthatches, woodpeckers, gold finches, purple finches, are almost completely missing.

No changes here. The normal mix plus the seasonal hundreds upon hundreds of juvenile blue birds this time of year.

I do not think there are any recent cases here.

We are fishing folk near-ish to Glacier NP - last season on the water over the span of several months we saw sick and/or dead: black bear, bald eagle, merganser, grouse, turkey - all in the same general area, all on or adjacent to the river. Many of these animals were collected by fish and game and bird flu was suspected (but not yet confirmed) for all including the black bear.

Our small wild bird populations (songbirds) do not seem affected judging by our observations, and my research indicates songbirds are the least vulnerable of all wild bird types. The birds we saw sick or dead were the sort most commonly associated with Avian Flu (waterfowl, poultry, and those who feed on them, the raptors).

There have been confirmed cases of Grizzly Bear in the park with Avian Flu (2023) - those bears were euthanized, and exhibited the same symptoms as the black bear we encountered. Flathead and Glacier Counties have both confirmed cases of Avian Flu in domestic poultry flocks as well. It is definitely here. And whether or not what we witnessed was Avian Flu as we suspect, something odd is afoot (and awing), in these parts.

The early spring songbirds have arrived in Upstate New York. I can hear them chirping and singing, especially in the morning. I work near a river as well which has its own unique population of birds that frequent it.

I have not observed any bird deaths so far this winter outside of natural predation. However, I have not seen many waterfowl so take my observations with a grain of salt.

I live out in the boondocks and still have lots of pretty birds using the water we put out for them on our patio.

Mark Reed wrote: If it isn't flu then it's something else and I think it's something else because they have been declining for longer than just this year.

Some research I read recently suggests the roll-out of 5G may be a factor. In the past, sudden changes related to radio waves corresponded to huge bee die-offs. Last summer, both I and another North American permie saw very few bees compared to the year before. The good news is that in the past, the bees re-bounded very quickly.

I am aware that correlation doesn't prove causation, but it at least may indicate that there is something other than Avian Flu that's involved in some way. One may weaken or enhance other stressors as an example.

I’ve seen/heard reports of flocks of wild waterfowl dying en masse— the mergansers along Lake Michigan, and then in other places people stumbling across dozens of dead geese lying out in fields. Also  heard one bald eagle in western Illinois found dead and tested positive. I have not encountered these personally, though.

Backyard songbirds seem to be more or less normal numbers here.

If this link was already posted, my apology.  The data supporting the interactive map is shown in a spreadsheet below the map and appears to be as recent as 2/10/2025.  Although the data are for the U.S., locations near the border may be able to infer prevalance based on the US data, but with caution as sampling will impact numbers.

https://www.cdc.gov/bird-flu/situation-summary/data-map-wild-birds.html