Volunteers are on the lookout for sick birds as outbreak shatters ‘fairytale belief’ that disease would not reach Australia
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- Jean hoped bird flu wouldn’t come to Australia. Then it arrived – and she saw a tern ‘trembling and swaying’ | Bird flu | The Guardian
Kat WongMon 10 Aug 2026 11.00 EDTShare
Bird enthusiast Jean Turner hoped avian flu would never arrive at her doorstep.
At her home on Kangaroo Island in South Australia, bossy fairy wrens chirp at her from the deck, grey currawongs clumsily fall into her bird bath, and fluffy, hooded plover chicks emerge from speckled eggs in front of her binoculars.
But online, images of Argentinian coastlines strewn with dead seal pups and researchers lining up rows of dead seabirds on Antarctic islands offered a warning of what could come.
So when South Australia confirmed its first case of the deadly H5 bird flu strain, just over 200km away at Robe on the Limestone Coast, Turner was prepared to become a different kind of birder.
“We had this fairytale belief that maybe we wouldn’t get it here,” she says.
“But it’s here and now things are going to get harder and more confronting.”
She is one of more than 120 volunteers who have signed up for the Bird Observers Network, which allows birders to contribute to the state’s bird flu response.
The partnership between the South Australian government, Conservation Council SA, Birds SA and Birdlife Australia trains volunteers to identify and report sick birds that may be showing signs associated with H5 bird flu.
Since the network’s first session, Turner has already reported a sick greater crested tern, which was resting at the edge of a flock.
While the other birds shuffled or flew around as she tried to get a better look, the sick animal didn’t respond.
“It was standing on the jetty, trembling and swaying a bit,” Turner says.
“It didn’t look well, it just looked really miserable.”
Compared with the non-bird-obsessed general public, birders can offer greater detail when reporting potentially infected birds, says Steven Langley, the president of Birds SA.
They can often recognise species more accurately, use their binoculars to observe possible abnormalities within a flock, and notice when birds they might see on their routine walks go missing.
“We all just want to be able to do whatever we can to make a difference,” Langley says.
“When you see these distressing images from overseas, you’re implanting them into your mind and onto the places and the birds that you have got a great deal of affection for.”
Volunteers generally don’t receive further correspondence after they’ve made a submission, but multiple crested terns found on Kangaroo Island have been tested and returned confirmed positive results for H5 bird flu since Turner’s report.
Exposing the Big Game 