About a week ago I was shocked to discover several bird corpses near our house; and casualties continue to mount.  All neighbors report similarly, including some 20 kilometers away or more.  What is going on??  I enjoy the many species of birds that love my wife's gardens.  So this is a disturbing development -- it didn't happen in earlier "bird flu" outbreaks.

 

When I Google the best hit is to ThaiVisa News (headlined "No human infection of bird flu assured")  But that article is a month old and mentions just five (widely dispersed) provinces, not mine.

 

Can anyone clarify?

Quite strangely I saw a local bird in BKK in the throes of death (quivering like in seizure) as I walked past my local BTS stop (Talat Phlu) last evening. The moto taxi guys were all sitting around and staring at it. I wonder if some government effort is on to poison them ?

 

Where are you seeing these deaths ?

Disease Control Ministry just sent letters to every municipality to survey and ask villagers if any chickens are dying so the vet office can check. No confirmed avian influenza cases as of yet that I am aware of. 

I used to have a host of small bats come out at night time swooshing and twirling aroud our garden. All died around the same time, maybe about a month ago. So so sad to see all the tiny bodies on the ground the following day, up to 4 or 5 at a time?

Just saw a dead bird at my parking lot in Jomtien.

6 hours ago, tonray said:

Quite strangely I saw a local bird in BKK in the throes of death (quivering like in seizure) as I walked past my local BTS stop (Talat Phlu) last evening. The moto taxi guys were all sitting around and staring at it. I wonder if some government effort is on to poison them ?

 

Where are you seeing these deaths ?

Seeing a bird die is enough to send old Vietnamese folks into heart attack, that is a extreme Bad Luck sign...........and they are seriously petrified if they see a bird as you described - 'in the throes of death' - a bird already dead is not a problem at all, unless it died on your doorstep...........but seeing one die??  Count your days  

Wow.  The only rumor I've heard is that this is NOT (ordinary) avian flu.  Seems like an Alfred Hitchcock film.  

 

I'm not sure which species are most affected.  Certainly losses of my neighbors'  chickens have been very severe here in North Central Thailand.  Taking a brief walk just now I saw no new corpses but heard only modest chirping and glimpsed a single pigeon.  Birds (but we have no chickens) are generally ubiquitous around our house, nesting on the roof, and in nearby trees etc.

 

Are Bangkok newspapers or TV commenting on this?  I'm a poor Googler and the only hits I see at Google or News.Google are the ThaiVisa item,  "H1N1 Flu Outbreak in Myanmar Linked to One Death" (24 July).  What gives?

 

birds are cheaper than guinea pigs

Some of the birds I met on soil 6 acted dead.

I've heard of an H5N8 outbreak in some other countries, and that may be why Thai vets are increasing their monitoring, but normally Bird Flu impacts on the chicken farms, and not wild birds.  Intensive farming of Chickens creates the ideal conditions for Bird Flu to cause illness, but wild birds are usually tougher and more resistant, so they don't generally fall out of the skies twitching.

 

My guess is poorly controlled pesticide use, or perhaps some local farmer may be poisoning wild birds to try and reduce the chance of infection of his chickens?

1 hour ago, TunnelRat69 said:

Seeing a bird die is enough to send old Vietnamese folks into heart attack, that is a extreme Bad Luck sign...........and they are seriously petrified if they see a bird as you described - 'in the throes of death' - a bird already dead is not a problem at all, unless it died on your doorstep...........but seeing one die??  Count your days  

Thank God I am not Vietnamese! 

To the OP.  If you gave some idea where your house is it would help. You could be in Tooting Trat or Nan for all I know.
 

I suppose there is a bird's cemetery. They come down like kamikaze and can't stop. Bad luck.

49 minutes ago, fantom said:

To the OP.  If you gave some idea where your house is it would help. You could be in Tooting Trat or Nan for all I know.
 

"Tooting Trat or Nan" ? I already mentioned North Central Thailand.  It sounds like your knowledge of Thai geography is even worse than mine.  

My apologies I did not realise you were the writer of the later post

11 hours ago, tonray said:

Quite strangely I saw a local bird in BKK in the throes of death (quivering like in seizure) as I walked past my local BTS stop (Talat Phlu) last evening. The moto taxi guys were all sitting around and staring at it. I wonder if some government effort is on to poison them ?

 

Where are you seeing these deaths ?

They should better poison the homeless soi dogs. Or sell to Vietnam.

that depends on whether they accept live (a)livestock imports

13 hours ago, alocacoc said:

Just saw a dead bird at my parking lot in Jomtien.

Got a comatose one in my condo, wish she would wake up and bugger off!

http://www.who.int/influenza/human_animal_interface/avian_influenza/riskassessment_AH5N8_201611/en/

The above site suggests that infection of humans is rare.

There was a similar, very shocking event about bird death near a small mid-west town in the states a couple of years back. What happened was beyond bizarre.

The people got really concerned about the sudden increase in bird deaths near their quiet little town. Literally dozens of new bird deaths every week. They held a special counsel meeting to decide what to do. They wanted to know "Why" so they hired a Veterinary Pathologist to determine just how all those birds died. After numerous examinations, it was determined that blunt force trauma was the major factor.

So then they hired an Aviary Behavior Specialist to do a complete government study on the birds to determine if something had caused a sudden change in their normal routines. He brought in an outside, think tank team and set up an entire behavior monitoring study and station. After about 3 months they called a town meeting to reveal the finding of all the studies.

They reassured the town's people that it was no virus or infection that was killing the birds, that, in fact it was blunt force trauma so they turned the meeting over to the behavior specialists.

They reported that after weeks of intensive study, they had determined that these birds were in fact, scavengers. By being scavengers, they seek their food source near the roadway for dead animals. They further revealed that while these birds displayed tactics of intelligence and wit by placing lookouts on the wires along the road to warn those scavenging the meal of approaching danger. Now while these birds had mastered the term "CAWR", "CAWR", they had not yet learned to say "TRUCK", "TRUCK".