Cases of bird/poultry flu in wildish birds are filling in the gaps on the map and creeping further north – to very near the Scottish Border in both Cumbria and Nortumberland.
An excellent report in the Guardian makes slightly scary reading with Mute Swans spinning in cicles and bleeding from their nostrils. The quote from Ruth Cromie is particularly worth reading (as always).
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Dr Cromie’s comments seem to have been a bit mangled by the Gaianurd. Britain may well slaughter about 15 chooks per person per year but to conflate that with the arrival of a disease vectored across Europe by migrating birds seems like a stretch to me. If I wasn’t so polite I would say it was arse-backwards, so I won’t say it.
And what’s the stuff about coughing swans & similarity to the symptoms of Covid supposed to imply? Influenza and corona viruses are not the same and under the present circumstances a more irresponsible comment is hard to imagine.