During 2020-2021 outbreaks of avian inflenza, Reuters reported that authorities in Senegal diagnosed H5N1 avian influenza in a colony of pelicans resulting in 750 fatalities.  The outbreak occurred from January 23rd onwards in the Djoudj Sanctuary near the border with Mauritania, a wetland area for birds crossing the Sahara Desert to West Africa.  Although the sanctuary has as many as 300 species, only pelicans were affected.

Concurrently an outbreak of H5N1 was diagnosed on a poultry farm in the Thies region 120 miles from the Djoudj Sanctuary. This creates the presumption that the outbreak in domestic chickens was related to shedding by migratory birds.

The 2000-2021 series of H5N8 outbreaks have affected large numbers of bar-head geese in India, swans in China, Holland, Germany and England, isolated diagnoses of crows in many Asian nations , cranes in Europe and raptors in Europe and Asia.