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Avian influenza, also known as bird-flu, is dominating headlines in some parts of the world. The first cases of the deadly H5N1 strain of the virus have been confirmed in Europe and there have been new outbreaks in Asia. Bird flu is here to stay, according to the World Health Organisation, and countries are revising their procedures on how to prevent, or at the very least delay, a human pandemic. In areas where the virus has already been confirmed, like Romania, most efforts focus on trying to keep domestic birds away from wild local birds like swans, and migrating birds like geese. In the Danube Delta, thousands of hens, ducks and geese have already been slaughtered.
    Don’t demonise the wild birds, pleads ornithologist Eugen Petrescu. Bird flu began among poultry in southeast Asia, he explains, almost certainly because of the way people treat domestic birds, cramped together in small cages. They infected the wild birds, which are now bringing the virus to Europe and Africa. Poultry are catching it, and sooner or later, so will humans. It’s coming full circle. So don’t blame the birds he says. Blame human cruelty.
    I’ve spent a lot of time with Eugen in the last few days. As head of the Danube Delta branch of the Romanian Ornithological Society, he’s given me a bird’s eye view of the gathering bird flu storm—and the possibility of a human pandemic. It’s not a pretty sight.
    We used to stand together beside a lake in Mined, not far from the Delta capital, Tulcea. Watching through powerful binoculars, he identified one species after another: 2 pigmy cormorants, 10 domestic ducks, egrets, black-headed gulls, and swans, lots of swans. Sleeping.
    "They shouldn’t be sleeping now," he said. "It’s the middle of the day! Perhaps they’re sick." Swans have borne the brunt of the bird flu outbreak here so far. They were weak anyway, because of the floods which have struck Romania this Spring and Summer. Swans thrived in water not much deeper than one metre. They plunged their long necks under water to feed. With water levels unusually high, the swans took refuge this year in fish farms, where many shallow, man-made pools offered rich pickings. But other birds, domestic and wild, gathered there too—and such concentrations of birds, experts said, created a perfect environment for spreading disease. In the second confirmed bird-flu cluster in the Delta, 137 swans died, on a fish farm in the village of Maliuc. In the third cluster, near the Ukrainian border, 15 swans died.
    "The numbers may not be huge," Eugen says, "but this is undoubtedly the tip of the avian influenza iceberg." He is certain that bird flu is already present in Romania’s neighbours, Ukraine, Moldova, and Bulgaria.
    White-fronted geese can travel 500 kilometres in a single day! He hopes scientists will concentrate on a vaccine to prevent the virus in birds, and not put all their efforts into the human version.
    We hired a boat from his son, Daniel, to navigate through the Delta. In normal times, Daniel ran bird-watching trips. This season though, tourism is dead. Hunting and angling, and all expeditions to the Delta, were banned.
    Snow has already fallen in the Carpathian mountains. Rain lashed our faces. Swans flew overhead, heavy-bodied, like cargo planes, white against the charcoal sky. Egrets stepped daintily as bridesmaids in the mud. Gaggles of geese waddled indignantly along the shore, like sporting personalities, grumbling noisily against the umpire’s latest decision.
    We cannot land at Maliuc because of the quarantine. A redcross boat and many police launches were moored on the bank. There were men in blue overalls in the distance. And not a domestic bird in sight. They’ve all been gathered, gassed, and buried.
    Another day, by car, I visited Mahmudia. According to a local legend, the Turkish sultan once lost a gold coin, known as a mahmudea, here, and offered a handsome reward to anyone who found it. No one can tell me the end of the story. At the edge of the village, Marin and Vasile were stacking maize stalks—winter fodder for their cows. Crowded together, complaining loudly, their geese crouched under a wire grid, where com was normally stored. People have been told to keep them inside, to stop them mixing with wild birds. But on the nearby pond I found a flock of domestic ducks, nonetheless. No one could tell me who they belong to. "Some people don’t understand how serious this is," said one local woman, Gherghina. All her geese were on a pond, inside her own compound. But there was nothing to stop wild birds flying in, and mixing with them there.
    According to experts from the World Health Organisation, the virus will remain for a long time in the region. More cases of bird flu will be discovered. And each time, a major quarantine operation will have to be launched. To kill poultry, to closely observe those who have come into contact with sick birds, and seal off the area. People throughout this wetland region will just have to learn a new way of life, they say. And so will their hens and ducks and geese.
    Like the tale of the Sultan’s gold coin, no one can say how this story will end.