11 Comments

Scary - especially the bit about sea lions! But a super interesting read - thanks Melanie

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Thank you. I've heard of seals or sea lions getting canine distemper but never bird flu before.

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Interesting, and alarming!

You've made me want to play closer attention to the birds that come and go from the beach that I live at.

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author

Thank you. I'm wondering about our birds now too.

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herring gull?

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I'm not sure - it looks to me like it has a darker head which would rule out an adult herring gull, but it could be a juvenile.

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I'd heard a brief story recently that avian flu is spreading, but without the in-depth research that you did -- thank you for that! It is scary to think about. The questions you pose are the same ones I wondered as well. I also wonder about flu trends over the ages -- could there have been other large outbreaks in the past that humans didn't attend to? In other words, could this be part of a larger cycle? I'd like that to be the case, but this feels a bit like the growing human population on Earth is beginning to crowd other species and this is the result.

Also, props for the title!

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It's possible that there were other big bird flu events that we didn't notice, and because there are more of us we are noticing them now. I'd like to think so too. But the increasing frequency of outbreaks in domestic poultry and the link between outbreaks in poultry and wild birds suggests it's more likely our agricultural practices I think.

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May 6, 2023Liked by Melanie Newfield

That's an adult Ring-billed Gull, Larus delawarensis.

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author

So it is, thank you so much.

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May 6, 2023Liked by Melanie Newfield

And thank you for your inspired writing about important topics!

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