Category: bird flu

Cases of bird/poultry flu in wild birds in the UK continue to mount and are at a higher level than last year.  It hasn’t gone away. Numbers of birds tested as positive: in a previous blog (click here) I compared the number of records of wild birds testing positive for bird flu up to and…

Did you hear Katie-jo Luxton on BBC Radio 4 Today on Monday morning? Worth a listen and well done to Today for continuing to feature news (all of it bad) about bird flu in the absence of Defra saying much about what’s happening (click here at 08:45am, near the end of the programme). I was…

North West Bird Watching Festival at Martin Mere cancelled because of bird flu. A dead Hen Harrier with bird flu from Highland in this week’s non-informative update from Defra (see here).  Also five Gannets tested positive from two locations in Cornwall. Remember, the number of birds testing positive may not be the number of birds…

Two things; today’s weekly update from DEFRA and an interesting remark on this morning’s Farming Today. 1. DEFRA’s weekly update (click here) is the usual less than transparent and informative list but you don’t often see Long-tailed Skua mentioned on a UK government website – might this be a first? Many of us heard about…

There’s a very good article in October Birdwatch by David Campbell – of course it doesn’t make happy reading but it covers the ground and the issues well, including some interesting international aspects. As the article says ‘…losses were catastrophic’. On Farming Today this morning (click here about 7 minutes into the programme) there was…