Bird flu confirmed in Willsboro dead bald eagle

Test results in on bird found dead in December; cases still rare in the Adirondack region

By Tim Rowland

A juvenile bald eagle found dead in Willsboro has tested positive for bird flu, and residents and officials along Lake Champlain are fearful other eagles may die because they have been spotted eating dead geese.

Kathryn Reinhardt found the eagle in December and immediately notified the Department of Environmental Conservation, which sent the bird to Albany for testing. She said she’d been notified Wednesday that it had died of avian influenza.

Meanwhile, social media posters on What’s Happening in Westport, NY, published photos of dead geese on the ice at a Lake Champlain marina and said they had left a voicemail reporting the situation to the DEC.

Westport Supervisor Ike Tyler said he began to see dead geese along the lake when the ice broke, and has seen bald eagles feeding on the geese. “I called the DEC and they said ‘do what you want, we’re not going to come,’” Tyler said. “I think that’s a crying shame, and I’m going to try to get in touch with the (DEC) commissioner.”

Contact with infected birds is known to spread the disease.

“I’m very concerned,” Tyler said. “Birds are dying, and eagles are eating them, so they’re probably going to die too.”

The DEC had not issued a public comment as of Thursday about this specific case, but had noted earlier that bird flu was in the region, and that dead snow geese north of Plattsburgh in 2023 had tested positive. Citizen watchdogs had reported dozens of dead snow geese along the shores of Lake Champlain, according to Explorer reports.

Reached Wednesday afternoon, Reinhardt said she “was doing yard work, crossing the yard with my wheelbarrow and I noticed this large brown lump in the yard and went over to investigate. I just knew immediately I had to call someone.”

The DEC advised her not to touch it without gloves, and cover it to keep predators away. “We covered it with a large, metal, scooped tray that’s used for mixing cement,” Reinhardt said. “It was heavy and covered it completely to keep the eagle away from our three cats or other evening critters.”

According to a USDA registry, highly pathogenic avian influenza is rare inside the Blue Line, or at least reported cases of it are. Four bald eagle deaths had been reported in Herkimer (two), Lewis and Franklin counties.

The DEC has urged those who find birds suspected to have succumbed to the pathogen to report the finding to a web-based database. The new link for reporting observations is located on DEC’s Animal Diseases webpage and was developed in collaboration with Cornell Wildlife Health Unit.

A number of species, including wild and farm animals, are susceptible to the disease, but in the bird community it has been found in raptors, waterfowl, crows and ravens, sporting birds and domestic chickens, ducks and geese.

It does not appear to affect songbirds.

The Centers for Disease Control says the current public health risk is low. There have been 70 human cases since it was first detected in January 2022, and one death. There has been no known person-to-person spread of the disease to date.

Photo at top: Explorer file photo by Gerald Lynch