On occasion, a low-pathogenic virus can jump from wild birds to poultry farms. As the virus replicates in densely packed warehouses of farmed birds, it can quickly evolve and pick up adaptations that make it highly deadly to poultry. At that point, it gets dubbed a highly pathogenic avian influenza virus, or HPAI virus. Historically, however, most of these HPAI viruses haven’t killed large numbers of wild birds, even if they did spill out of the farm and back into wild populations., But the virus is causing another major crisis that’s drawn far less attention: the death of wild birds. The ongoing outbreak of avian flu has killed hundreds of thousands — if not millions — of wild birds, including endangered species like the California condor. It’s one of the worst wildlife disease outbreaks in history., From 2018 to 2020, over five survey periods, totaling 35 weeks, more than 1,300 hours of monitoring and covering 22 buildings, volunteers with the Bird Collision Corps recorded 718 bird deaths and 44 injuries from window collisions..