The Latest Bird Flu Pandemic Is Terrible—And Strange
A duck hunter’s pickup truck rolls up to the Grizzly Island Wildlife Area check station, freshly hunted waterfowl tied into a strap lying in the bed. It’s the first day of duck hunting season in the Sacramento–San Joaquin River Delta. Golden and green marsh grasses sway on the flat landscape beneath a cloudy sky.
“Do you mind if I swab your birds?” asks Rebecca Mihalco, a biologist with the U.S. Department of Agriculture Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS).
The hunter consents. He passes Mihalco the nylon strap that carries his take for the day, five ducks of various species, heads tucked through the strap loops. She sets the strap onto her table to identify the birds. To meet the testing quota, she is looking for mallards, pintails, northern shovelers, cinnamon teals, green-winged teals, American wigeons, wood ducks, and gadwalls.
Donning black nitrile gloves, Mihalco grabs a swab on a stick, similar to those used in COVID-19 rapid tests. She opens the beak of the first duck, swipes the inside of its mouth, and drops the swab into a test tube. She swirls another swab in the duck’s cloaca, the birds’ common opening for waste, and drops it into the same tube. After repeating the oral and cloacal swabs for each bird, she returns the waterfowl to the hunter.
By the time the clouds have cleared and the afternoon sun glimmers on the Delta’s tangled channels and marshland, Mihalco has gathered samples from 134 birds, her quota of healthy waterfowl species known to carry avian influenza within the San Francisco Bay watershed. Tomorrow she will be off to the next waterfowl hunting site to do it all again, adding data to the National Disease Program survey of the latest strain of avian flu in wild birds.