Yesterday DEFRA announced that avian influenza H5N8 (pathogenicity to be confirmed) has been confirmed in captive birds at non-poultry premises near Stroud in Gloucestershire. I think we can be fairly sure that this is Slimbridge WWT.
And the cases in wild birds (which mostly appear, given the vague way in which DEFRAA reports these cases) to be non-native species) is growing slowly but steadily too:
Given the geographic spread of cases in poultry and wild-ish birds it appears that the bird flu virus is swishing about widely across at least much of England.
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I hope the term wildish is not a conservationists subconscious bias emerging. I think the range of birds reported is more a result of observation bias.These are large easily seen birds not removed by most scavengers which are tolerant of disturbance and inhabit much frequented places. Like the Canada and White fronted geese resident at the Minsmere theme park whereas the migrant geese on the remote washes and arable wastes of Cambridgeshire and Lincolnshire are less likely to be found.
Also when did you last find a dead smaller bird. I must admit to finding them as I think hundreds? of individuals are drawn to our rural feeder and some expire. We get through getting on for a kilo of sunflower hearts a day at full flow.
On this subject. It would be good if you could ask Chris Packham to nudge his nerdier friends to look at the work by Andrew C Ferreira*.using AI to identify individual Great Tits and see if it can be made more widely available and used for other species. I remember Lolo said on Autumn watch 100 or so ringed Hawfinches visited one feeder.
If we knew how many GT individuals visited a feeder then with their average territory size we could guess how far they were coming from, ie how big an area a feeder influences in the breeding season.
At one end I know the robins have three territories joining at the feeder (if you do not count the juvenile which seemed to fly under the radar so to speak.) With interlopers not tolerated except during Beast from the East when there were more. At the other extreme I have seen Greater spotted woodpeckers fly in from a wood a kilometer away and Stock doves come from over the horizon.
*Deep learning‐based methods for individual recognition in small birds