Wild birds have been falling out of the sky above Missouri and Kansas amid a suspected spike in avian influenza, according to reports.
Some hundreds of the migratory birds, mainly geese, fell dead in mid-flight above Kansas City, Missouri, according to KMBC News.
The dead wild birds number in thousands across the State of Kansas — especially in the vicinity of reservoirs, KSN-TV reported. Many of the birds could be asymptomatic.
“It just blew up last week. I got four calls in one hour,” Tyler Offenbacker of Wildlife Control, a for-profit animal control operation in Missouri, told KMBC. “It’s in our nature to want to help a wounded animal, but you don’t want to be picking animals up.”
“It can be a shocking sight … those infected birds get fatigued and can fall from the sky,” Tom Bidrowski, a biologist at the Kansas Department of Wildlife, said. (RELATED: Hundreds Of Cows Infected As Sides Of Roads Littered With Rotting Carcasses)
Seventeen counties across Kansas and 19 across Missouri have reported bird flu cases, KMBC reported.
The Kansas Department of Agriculture (KDA) reported a spike in cases of the highly contagious disease resulting from increased migration of wild birds across Kansas since November.
The Missouri Department of Conservation (MDC) said it was collecting the birds in Missouri to investigate the cause of death but suspected the ongoing bird flu outbreak.
Both the KDA and the MDC warned the public of the high probability of transmission from wild geese to poultry. The MDC advocated against handling dead birds.
The disease causes respiratory symptoms, weakness, diarrhea and a drop in egg production — with some eggs being soft-shelled or deformed, among others, in poultry, the KDA noted. Infected birds and eggs are being kept away from reaching consumers, although peple should always properly handle and cook livestock.
The last time bird flu was reported in livestock in Kansas was in April on a dairy farm, according to data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). There have been a total of four cases, all from dairy farms. There are no confirmed cases in Missouri at this time, the data shows.
The outbreak has also affected humans — particularly dairy and poultry workers — with 58 confirmed cases across the U.S., according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Just over half of the cases — 32 — occurred in California. (RELATED: WHO Confirms First Human Death From H5N2 Bird Flu)
California is the state with the highest number of cases, with 617 cases so far, all on dairy farms, according to the USDA data. The state was also the largest producer of cow milk as of 2023, the USDA noted.
There has been no report of person-to-person spread so far, and the risk posed to public health remains low at this time, according to the the CDC.
“CDC is watching the situation carefully and working with states to monitor people with animal exposures,” the CDC said.
This article was originally published at dailycaller.com
