State starts sampling fowl for H5N1 virus

FIR ISLAND, Skagit County — Deftly maneuvering inside a big, wire trap, Brad Otto quickly cornered and grabbed the flapping, quacking mallard.

The corn bait had been consumed. Now it was time for the duck to show its stuff — as a guard against the deadly bird flu.

Otto, a wildlife technician for the state Department of Fish and Wildlife, along with state and federal biologists, are part of a new nationwide effort to detect the H5N1 flu virus if it reaches the United States in migratory birds.

So Wednesday, Otto gently passed the wild bird out of the trap to biologists, who checked it over from head to toe as a demonstration for reporters of the way the teams are collecting and sampling wild birds.

Specific plumage and the sapphire color under its wings showed it was juvenile male. A glance at its backside confirmed its sex. A cotton swab took cell samples to be checked by a Washington State University lab for the H5N1 virus.

"We're kind of on the front line, as far as the lower 48 states goes," said Don Kraege, waterfowl section manager for state Fish and Wildlife.

"If it's found anywhere, it's a good chance it could be found here."

In the past three years, H5N1 has killed 139 people. So far, almost all human infections have occurred in Asian poultry workers. But experts fear the virus could mutate into a form that could be easily transmitted among humans, causing a worldwide pandemic that could kill millions.

Just last Monday, federal officials announced that two swans from the shores of Michigan's Lake Erie had tested positive for a harmless version of the H5N1 virus.

Alaska officials began testing in May as waterfowl and shorebirds from the lower 48 states migrated north to summer habitat and mixed with birds from Asia, where the virus has been most prevalent.

Washington officials started testing in late July because the state is in the Pacific Flyway that runs from the Arctic to Mexico. The rest of the West Coast and Pacific islands are also part of the testing.

The state has received $425,000 from a $29 million federal program to sample up to 100,000 wild birds and collect 50,000 fecal samples nationwide. Washington biologists hope to test 3,600 birds — including many killed by hunters — and gather 1,500 fecal samples.

For now, the biologists are focused on the earliest arrivals from Alaska — mallard ducks and Western sandpipers. In coming months they also will test pintails, wigeon, green-winged teals, shovelers and sea ducks. Testing of shorebirds will include dunlin, red knots and ruddy turnstones.

Using traps and nets, the biologists will mainly collect live samples in Puget Sound and coastal estuaries. In the fall, the agents will be at stations to sample hunter-killed birds in those same areas and in the Columbia and Yakima river basins.

Samples are sent to state labs in Puyallup or Pullman for testing within 48 hours. If a potentially lethal, or "highly pathogenic," flu virus is found, further tests to determine the strain would be done in a federal lab in Ames, Iowa.

No infected birds have been found in Washington, and no human infection has been reported in the United States. But biologists are eager to get on with the sampling that might provide the earliest warnings of an increasing U.S. threat. In just a few weeks, they have sampled 450 birds, mostly in Grays Harbor County.

After swabbing the mallard Wednesday, Mike Davison, a state district biologist for Fish and Wildlife, carefully banded the animal's foot, for identification, in case he is caught again. Then he took him to the edge of the pond on Fir Island's Haton Wildlife Reserve.

Davison gave the duck a quick toss. It skimmed across the pond, then soared up and over a dike and out over misty Skagit Bay.

"We release them over the water, where they're not vulnerable," Davison said. "When a bird takes off like that, it makes us so happy."

Warren King: 206-464-2247 or wking@seattletimes.com