When bird flu hit the UK, suffering seabirds died in their thousands. Australia’s wild flocks will soon do the same

From the publisher

Sandwich terns are a graceful seabird known for their committed, forceful and spectacular plunging dives into the ocean to catch fish. Thousands of the species started to fall sick across Europe in 2022 with tens of thousands dying as a lineage of the H5N1 bird flu – 2.3.4.4b – spread through the continent’s wild flocks. The effects of the virus on the brain cause the terns to flounder on the ground, craning and straining their necks in a suffering behaviour known as star-gazing. It is difficult to watch. “I remember a colony at Scolt Head Island in Norfolk,” says Prof James Pearce-Higgins, the director of science at the British Trust…

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