A year earlier, government wildlife biologists began recording a mysterious illness killing off seals, as well as avian cholera.
But there would seem to be little doubt that corvids qualify as avian Einsteins.
Then again, as "Avian Architecture" points out, these bowers are not really nests at all.
Outbreaks can be scary, and it's not uncommon for people to panic over diseases such as avian influenza.
It contains genes from flu viruses that normally circulate in pigs in Europe and Asia, as well as avian and human genes.
Similarly, microbiologists can too easily focus on the microscopic, despite diseases such as avian fly Lyme disease, cholera and rabies being linked in their lifecycles to other animals.
The National Wildlife Health Center ultimately diagnoses the probable cause of the die-off as avian panic, most likely triggered by loud noises — possibly fireworks — too close to the birds' nighttime roost.
As our guide marched us through the jungle, day after day, in search of an ever-narrowing list of the area's antbirds and antthrushes and flycatchers and manakins, I came to see the trip as avian psychopharmacology.
Chinese palaeontologists have taken firm control of their own backyard; and it is the astonishing discoveries they have made there that have done most to fuel the recognition that birds properly rank as avian dinosaurs.
Now, as avian influenza has spread to half the Asian continent, health experts say such measures have been scattershot, because health care systems are rudimentary and money is lacking.
But according to the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, it contains genes from flu viruses that normally circulate in pigs in Europe and Asia, as well as avian and human genes.
