National Wildlife Disease Program (NWDP)

DISEASE SURVEILLANCE

• avian influenza

SPECIAL INTEREST

Attempted wood duck capture for collaborative study (July 2008)
WDB Cumbee worked with USFWS biologist David Richardson at Noxubee National Wildlife Refuge and Brian Dorr (National Wildlife Research Center) to sample wood ducks that would be caught for refuge banding efforts. WDB Cumbee and Dr. Dorr have been collaborating on a new method of catching various types of birds with a Coda net launcher (a tool used for the live capture of birds). Biologist Richardson had wood ducks on bait to be captured and banded.
They worked together to catch the wood ducks with the new Coda nets, sample the ducks for
HPAI and band them for the refuge. Several attempts were made to capture but the wood duck
were not coming to the bait on the days we set up the nets. It was decided to put the capture on
hold for a few weeks to allow the wood duck numbers to increase.

Environmental sample collection (2008)
Specialist Carson Nelson also helped WDB Cumbee this month to collect environmental samples from four locations in Madison and Rankin County. Eighty samples were collected from parks around the Jackson area and mailed to NWDP in Fort Collins for analysis.

Mississippi conducts avian influenza surveillance at 3 morbidity/mortality events (2008)
WDB Cumbee was contacted by 3 different refuges to collect samples from American Black Ducks and Lesser Snow Geese. Preliminary results from the National Wildlife Health Centers in Madison, WI suggest that aflatoxins may have played a role in one of the events.

Contact:
Wildlife Disease Biologist James Cumbee (MS)
(662)325-3014
James.C.Cumbee@aphis.usda.gov