I’m grateful to Miles King’s Twitter feed (@MilesKing10) for pointing me in this direction – although it was on (although quite a long way down) my to-do list anyway.
I’ve updated you on the cases reported by Defra of bird flu in ‘wild’ birds over the last few years, and several times this winter (most recently, if you can call it recent, on 23 February when it rather looked as though things were petering out).
There haven’t been many cases since then, but the ones which have occurred have been fascinating. Have a look…
First, there was a record of bird flu in a ‘wild’ Pheasant in Lincolnshire in late February/early March. This appears to be the first record of bird flu in a wild Pheasant in the whole of Europe, ever – given that over 10,000 were tested between 2005 and 2013 and no sign of avian flu virus was found in a single one. [For new readers it might be worth reading this earlier blog on what vets regard as ‘wild’ birds which does complicate things a bit].
Defra does not test live birds, including live Pheasants (because ‘there is no longer a requirement to test live birds’) and they do not test shot Pheasants (because ‘there is no longer a requirement to test shot birds for bird flu’). So none of the 15 million shot Pheasants are tested (even though they are freely available and cost a few pence, if that, to purchase) and nor are any of roughly 40 million released Pheasants nor any of the ‘wild’ Pheasants left over from previous releases each spring. So this was a dead Pheasant which wasn’t shot. Interesting that it came from Lincolnshire – where previous outbreaks of bird flu (blamed on the generic ‘wild birds’) have occurrd in recent years.
I have mentioned before that Pheasants are susceptible in captivity to bird flu and are released into the countryside from captivity, and some are even recaptured after the shooting season to form a new captive breeding stock. They are also extremely numerous and exactly the type of bird to share habitat with free-range chickens and to be in close proximity to farm buildings. If they had fur, and black-and-white striped faces, then Pheasants would be regarded by vets as a prime candidate for a reservoir of disease…
But that’s the interesting thing about just a single Pheasant. The Defra updates seem to show that Buzzards all over the country (or at least southern England and South Wales) have been testing positive for bird flu; 4 Buzzards and a Goshawk in Suffolk, and single Buzzards in Devon, Hampshire and South Glamorgan. What’s going on here all of a sudden? We are told, on extremely thin evidence by Defra, that bird flu is a waterfowl thing. Have these Buzzards been feasting on swans and geese by chance? Or is it possible that they have been feeding on Pheasant carrion? Or what?
I wonder what Defra thinks is going on here? And I wonder what is going on here?
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Your thoughts would seem vindicated Mark. A great many of us are familiar with the sight of Buzzard feeding on Pheasant as carrion, in fact most folk I know in the countryside will also be aware of this behaviour. So the connection is an obvious one and adds another concern to the unregulated nature of Pheasant release in such huge numbers.
How did anyone even find the buzzards and the goshawk? Sounds suspicious to me. Is anyone likely to come across the carcass of either of these birds? Sounds more like they were killed illegally then submitted for testing.
hmm – that’s quite some speculation from very little information. It’s not that uncommon to come across things that have died naturally or not, even raptors – especially if they died from bird flu. They may have been found and sent in to the Predatory Bird Monitoring Scheme or similar.
Perhaps this is the shooting industry trying to implicate Buzzards as spreaders of bird flu in an effort to get their numbers reduced by culling. Badgers have been blamed and killed in huge numbers with bugger all evidence that they are responsible for bTB in cattle and Defra are now just another wing of the NFU and CA. Nothing would surprise me from them.
thanks Mark. Continuing the bovine TB analogy, perhaps what we need is pre and post-movement testing of pheasants for bird flu.
A more likely scenario is that Buzzards will be blamed for spreading bird flu to Pheasants, and a mass Buzzard cull will get underway.
Mark dont suppose anything useful like the locations in Suffolk is available is it? Then we could keep an eye out for more.
I would think it likely that they were found by birders and handed in to see if they were shot so someone must know and could come forward.
After the Beast from the East found two Lapwings and a skinny Fieldfair just nearby and in the garden, afraid I put it down to the weather. Nothing else dead since.
(Pheasants thriving! and laying in the stupidest places – along wire netting fence lines).
Get used to it, its called manipulation, the government take the lead in it, ably assisted by the state media and now government agencies .I was always told by my old dad never to tell lies now its the norm.
I know it all sounds very melodramatic but waken up people its happening,take everything with a healthy dose of scepticism.
A very interesting post.
And it would be timely for DEFRA to instigate intelligent research into the epidemiology of the disease with respect to the large reservoirs of disease (commercial birds farms, including pheasant rearing), routes of transmission from farmed to wild birds (farm biosecurity, release of subclinical carriers into the wild etc) and also looking at individual wild bird species…their prey, their behaviour etc.
Diseases in wild species in natural habitats are often self limiting.
However, where we change these parameters…large reservoirs of disease and transmission routes, we are exposing wild species to higher threat.
The State of Nature Report showed shocking declines in wild bird species, and so I think DEFRA should look at the threat commercial bird farming and release of non-native species is causing to wild birds, not the other way around.
It seems to me that this is an area that would make an interesting and valuable research project for a university or other independent organisation.
Unsure as to the Buzzards but the Gos was picked up having been hit by a car, presumably feeding on road kill (pheasant?). It died shortly after on its way to a local vet. Correct reporting procedures from there on brought this bird to my attention. I had ringed it last June as part of our local studies into this species.
Simon – thank you very much.