Birds mature pretty slowly, which explains why their populations take a bit longer to bounce back. It’s like they’re waiting for their turn in line at Starbucks. Last May, at a colony of sandwich terns off the coast of France, over 1,000 tern corpses were found during nesting season. It was like a scene straight out of a Hitchcock movie. The whole of France may have lost 10% of their breeding population in just one week. Imagine the bird funeral for that one.
The great skua seems to have suffered even more. Remote island sites in Britain, such as Orkney and the Shetlands, have recorded up to 85% die-offs. It’s like that one time you went to the gym and overdid it on your first day, except for them, it was the end.
We call it the highly pathogenic avian influenza, or H.P.A.I. If you thought that was some kind of weird Japanese dish, you’re wrong. This flu is so deadly that even chickens can’t handle it. In the past, this kind of virus was virtually unknown among wild birds. Except for that one time in 1961 when 1,300 common terns showed up dead along the coast of South Africa. And they say lightning doesn’t strike twice.
Scientists have discovered that wild aquatic birds carry these viruses endemically and sometimes pass them onto domestic birds, pigs, and even us humans. It’s almost like they’re saying, “Hey, want to share something with you.” But, for decades after that tern die-off, no other influenza was as virulent in wild birds. It wasn’t until new influenzas arrived, but in milder form. Kind of like a toned-down version of a Taylor Swift song.
Dr. Marius Gilbert, a Belgian epidemiologist, led a study in 2018 of this phenomenon. He and his colleagues reviewed 39 cases where a mild avian influenza had evolved into a killer virus. Surprisingly, all but two of those 39 cases happened among commercial poultry. It’s like a bad game of “which came first, the chicken or the virus.”
I had a chat with Dr. Gilbert recently and asked him if commercial poultry farms were the issue behind these virulent influenzas. He told me, “No. I don’t think it’s too far, but we have to bring nuance to that statement.” See, “commercial poultry” can mean anything from thousands upon thousands of birds in an industrial-scale operation to a small backyard with 10 chickens and six ducks. The ducks share the rice paddy with wild birds passing through, and some of the chickens are sold at a local market. It’s like a small-town farmer’s market, but with a side of viruses. With viruses flowing every which way, even the kids who tend to the ducks are at risk.

Serious News: nytimes