University of Illinois expert discusses avian flu, migrating wild birds

Each spring, roughly 3.5 billion wild birds migrate from their warm winter havens to their breeding grounds across North America, eating insects and distributing plant seeds.
Some also carry diseases like avian influenza, a worry for agricultural, environmental and public health authorities. Michael Ward, a University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign professor and an expert on wild bird migration and conservation, recently answered questions about how H5N1 – widely known these days as “avian flu” –  affects wild birds and how they contribute to its distribution across the U.S.