Two native New Zealand birds — a brown skua and a kāhu — have died from H5 bird flu in separate locations, and a virologist now cautions that these cases are almost certainly not the full picture. Because both birds were solitary scavengers that contract the virus only by feeding on already-infected carcasses, their deaths imply a broader, unseen chain of infection moving through the landscape. The origin of the virus may never be known, but the more pressing question — how far it has already spread — remains unanswered and urgent.