Field research has shown that bald eagles (Haliaeetus leucocephalus) in western states have been deprived of salmon carcasses, their natural source of food during the spawning season.  Climate change and human intervention in waterways has reduced the population of salmon in rivers resulting in a movement of eagle populations in the Pacific Northwest to farmland.  Eagles are now taking free-range chickens where available and are consuming carcasses of dead calves. Since the onset of HPAI, eagles are predators of migratory waterfowl and are infected from predation and scavenging on carcasses of birds that have died of the disease.