Australia - H5N1 in wild birds 2024 yet? - migrating birds deaths blamed on lack of food

[sharon sanders]

Bird flu H5N1 precautions ramp up as thousands of dead birds wash up along east coastline
November 6, 2024
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Thousands of migratory shorebirds have been discovered washed up dead or starving along beaches from North Queensland to Tasmania.

About 2,000 carcasses were found at one New South Wales beach this week, according to seabird research group Adrift Lab.

From October to November, migrating short-tailed shearwaters travel to their breeding sites along the Australian east coast from places like Siberia, Japan and South America.

Wildlife rescue volunteers say the looming threat of the lethal bird flu strain H5N1 is adding another layer of burden to the already busy period.

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"DPIRD is testing a subset of shearwaters found along NSW beaches for avian influenza, in addition to surveillance underway through the National Avian Influenza Wild Bird Surveillance Program," the statement said.

"No notifiable diseases have been detected in birds found on NSW beaches to date."
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more... https://www.msn.com/en-au/news/aust...irds-wash-up-along-east-coastline/ar-AA1tDi2C

 

[Pathfinder]

Adrift Lab

November 5 at 4:05 PM

A message from the #AdriftLab team to say THANK YOU for the incredible response to our call-out for #CitizenScience data and photos on #BeachWashed #birds - we've been overwhelmed by all the emails and DMs. Apologies if our responses are delayed, at the moment we're getting ~100 submissions per day and we want to make sure we're responding to each one to check the data, and provide feedback on what you're seeing.

In response to our last post that aimed to bust some of the pervasive myths around WHY #seabirds are washing up on beaches, we got a lot of comments saying the myths had indeed been busted (phew!) but the answer to the "why" question was still unclear. Most of our posts elude to this, but let's be clear.

So, we now know the birds are NOT washing up due to migration/exhaustion, wind/storms, or because its "nature" or selecting out the "weak ones". All of these are #misinformation.

The cause of the birds washing up is #OceanWarming (and in some years, #MarineHeatWaves). The Tasman Sea is a global warming "hotspot" (see our post earlier this week) and when the waters warm, fish either decline or they go elsewhere (including deeper in the water column). This makes prey less available. During the breeding season (right now), the #shearwaters are constrained in how far they can travel because they need to remain near their breeding islands. If the fish/squid/krill aren't around, the birds go hungry. Some of you might be thinking "why don't they just go elsewhere". An analogy: let's say all of the grocery stores in Sydney shut down suddenly. What if the government simply said to you "oh well, just go elsewhere".

There is a huge amount of evidence to support this, globally. When seabirds wash up on beaches in North America and Alaska (for example), they are emaciated (as our shearwaters are) and this has been consistently and repeatedly linked to warming waters. A few examples:

"Massive mortality of a planktivorous seabird in response to a marine heatwave" https://doi.org/10.1002/2017GL076164

"Marine bird mass mortality events as an indicator of the impacts of ocean warming" https://doi.org/10.3354/meps14330

"Extreme mortality and reproductive failure of common murres resulting from the northeast Pacific marine heatwave of 2014-2016" https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0226087
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JOURNALS.PLOS.ORG
Extreme mortality and reproductive failure of common murres resulting from the northeast Pacific marine heatwave of 2014-2016
About 62,000 dead or dying common murres (Uria aalge), the trophically dominant fish-eating seabird of the North Pacific, washed ashore between summer 2015 and spring 2016 on beaches from California to Alaska. Most birds were severely emaciated and, so far, no evidence for anything other than starva...​

https://www.facebook.com/adriftlab/...TmYgWQUHidjyHXftySoDbCQFwizxy6kK8iGNo38DG6yNl