Avian bird flu

New Topic
This topic has been archived, and won't accept reply postings.
 Bottom Clinger 28 Jun 2022

Just read that they have ‘shut’ the Isle of May due to bird flu. Serious. Dont think I shared this tale of when I was in Fife recently: I was on Cambo Sands - stunning beech with rocks. Saw a gannet perched on a rock and thought ‘that’s odd for it not to be spooked, good photo opportunity’. Watched it stretch it’s wings and took a photo. Got closer, and closer, then watched it keel over!  Clearly dead and quite an emotional thing to observe. Found another dead gannet further up the beach and reported all this to the council bloke managing the car park. This avian flu could have a monumentally disastrous impact - far north Scotland and St Kilda reporting huuuuge dead skis, gannets and terms. IIRC, this strain has been traced back to a chicken farm in China. 

Message Removed 28 Jun 2022
Reason: inappropriate content
 Harry Jarvis 28 Jun 2022
In reply to Bottom Clinger:

I'm on Shetland at the moment and was on Noss last week. Noss has also just been closed. It's an internationally important site for gannets and Great skuas. Sad to report there were many dead of both birds - gannets on the foreshore and bonxies on the moorland.

In reply to Harry Jarvis:

Sad indeed. 

 mondite 28 Jun 2022
In reply to Bottom Clinger:

There were some signs in a reserve near me saying stay away from any ill looking birds with the additional note of risk is low but why risk it?

I wonder how much the governments decision to relax the rules of keeping birds inside has to do with the risk vs the pushback especially around "free range" having had to be dropped for a while.

 Michael Hood 28 Jun 2022
In reply to Harry Jarvis:

Tragic ☹

I wonder what the medium to long term effect will be on populations

 jonny taylor 29 Jun 2022
In reply to Bottom Clinger:

Yes, a couple of weeks ago Dunnet Bay in the north was just a mass grave of gannets and guillemots. Very sad to see 

 Neil Williams 29 Jun 2022

In reply to cb294:

Given that it appears that monkeypox is transmitted by skin to skin contact (plus to some extent airborne) and is not an STD per se, what do you propose they do?  Get inside a giant condom before even hugging someone?  I think that's just a *little* bit homophobic.

But if you are talking about people who have sex with a large number of partners, there are straight people that do that too.

I agree with you on the Chinese lack of farming hygiene, by the way.  It was only a matter of time.

Post edited at 09:27
1
 Martin W 29 Jun 2022
In reply to Bottom Clinger:

There was a pretty worrying story on the BBC news web site the other week about the impact of avian flu on the gannets on Bass Rock:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-edinburgh-east-fife-61829551

"Public health advice is that the risk to human health from the virus is very low.

Members of the public are being urged not to touch any dead or dying birds and report sightings of more than five dead birds to Defra, or any ringed birds to the British Trust for Ornithology."

You can have a look at the latest situation on Bass Rock, if you really want to, on the web cam on the Scottish Seabird Centre's web site.

 Duncan Bourne 30 Jun 2022
In reply to Bottom Clinger:

Saw it covered on Springwatch the other week

 Toerag 01 Jul 2022
In reply to Bottom Clinger:

Same down here in the CI - warnings out not to touch birds washed up, no-one allowed on Burhou.  We have the most southerly gannet colony in Europe, hopefully it won't get to them but I'm not holding out much hope. At least this year's chicks should have flown the nests by the time it kicks in and they'll all be living at sea soon. French are seeing lots of deaths in their seabird colonies too. Our local beachcomber group hasn't had any sightings posted yet though.

 oldie 01 Jul 2022
In reply to Bottom Clinger:

Maybe my imagination but there seem to be less herring gulls this year, at least around Swanage, Found dead kestrel on Houns Tout but could be other reasons. Didn't see any puffins, there were a some just past Dancing Ledge last year, but their population has been dwindling anyway. Guillemots still seem plentiful......were last year's deaths further north linked to the flu or was it food availability? I suppose communal land birds like rooks are vulnerable.

In reply to oldie:

When I was up in Fife recently, local birders were telling me the bad winter storms killed thousands of sea birds. They described seeing 100s washed up auks on the beaches. 

 deepsoup 01 Jul 2022
In reply to Bottom Clinger:

There were dead auks washed up on the NE coast (of England too) before the winter really set in, the cause was a bit of a mystery at the time and perhaps it still is but bird flu was ruled out and it seems unlikely they were killed in winter storms.  This was a month or so before storm Arwen.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-tyne-58601859

Looking for that link just now, this one popped up too - a similar sort of a thing from the Netherlands in early 2019:  https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-47141900

In reply to deepsoup:

Jeez, sea birds really do have a tough time of it. 

Fascinating, bird fluctuations. Spent time at Leighton Moss this year. Very low coot chicks - probably explains why marsh harriers do so well, but I suppose in theory they could reduce their food supply too much (would balance out eventually I guess).  And the avocets that nest in a black headed full colony appear to have raised no chicks (30 pairs), but some folk reckon they will re-lay and hatch when the gulls have gone. Hope so. 

 pugilistswine 01 Jul 2022
In reply to Neil Williams:

Monkey pox is almost exclusively within the male gay community. There is an obsession with the idea of stigmatising a particular community, leading to bizarre WHO reports repeated ad nauseam that gloss over this using words like "mostly, but not exclusively" without further data points to clear up exactly what this means. But hey ho... in the bizarre upside-down world of 2022 we can't possibly let facts get in the way of feelings can we , like covid being a significant threat to people below the age of 70. Better to terrify and misinform, just in case.

8
 Toerag 04 Jul 2022
In reply to deepsoup:

> There were dead auks washed up on the NE coast (of England too) before the winter really set in, the cause was a bit of a mystery at the time and perhaps it still is but bird flu was ruled out and it seems unlikely they were killed in winter storms.  This was a month or so before storm Arwen.

Lots of unexplained shellfish deaths that way too. DEFRA say algal bloom, but the evidence doesn't entirely stack up. Fishermen & anglers say it's due to dredging the Tyne disturbing nasty chemicals from the bad old days up from the sediment that haven't been touched in decades.

In reply to pugilistswine:

> Monkey pox is almost exclusively within the male gay community.

> WHO reports repeated ad nauseam that gloss over this using words like "mostly, but not exclusively"

Those two statements seem to say the same thing.

 drunken monkey 06 Jul 2022
In reply to Bottom Clinger:

Was up in Embo (Near Dornoch) on holiday in May and the number of dead birds on the beach there was quite staggering. We must have seen 20-30 in a stretch of a few hundred metres. Suspect it was not weather related as we'd had no big storms of note at that time.


New Topic
This topic has been archived, and won't accept reply postings.
Loading Notifications...