Alaska villagers living in bird flu's flight path

Soon, latex gloves appeared on store shelves and Wild West-style posters started popping up around town: "Wanted: Birds of the Delta." Researchers camped out in the town's tribal council offices, preparing for trips to nearby Kwigluk Island with vials, swabs, nets and needles.

They came bearing a warning: The wild birds that the Yup'ik have hunted for millenniums may be carrying the first traces of the deadly bird flu virus from Asia into North America.

"It's kind of scary, you know," said resident Ronnie Peter, 39. "That's like, our food, you know."

The H5N1 avian influenza emerged in China 10 years ago and has since spread into Europe, Africa and the Middle East. Though the virus mainly infects fowl, since 2003 it has sickened 256 people and killed 151 around the world.

Kipnuk lies at the crossroads of an invisible freeway system linking migratory birds that journey along the East Asia-Australia flyway with those from the Pacific Americas flyway.

Tens of millions of birds flock every year to this seemingly endless expanse of soggy land in the Yukon Delta National Wildlife Refuge to feast on insects, grasses, worms and mussels before heading back south in the winter to Asia, Australia and other parts of the Americas.

"If it's going to show up in wild birds, Alaska is the most likely place where it's going to happen," said Brian McCaffery, a federal wildlife biologist who was camped a few miles down the coast from Kipnuk collecting bar-tailed godwit droppings for testing.

Federal officials have identified 29 bird species that are most likely to carry the deadly virus from Asia, and they have enlisted local hunters to help provide birds for testing.

In the old days, the Yup'ik Eskimos felled the uqsuqaq, metraq and kanguq with bows and throw sticks tipped with sharpened walrus ivory.

Now, the men use 12-gauge shotguns and reach remote hunting spots in motorboats.

Little else has changed -- until now.

"Oh Lord, what are we going to eat? Store-bought food?" thought Steven Mann, who oversees tribal operations in town, when he first started receiving faxes on bird flu safety in the spring.

The nervousness has waned through the summer, said the 58-year-old ex-Army sergeant, but still, "We don't joke about what we eat here."

Mann's son, Danny, a lanky 27-year-old who used to work as a bilingual parent liaison for the school, took on the job of bird flu testing manager in Kipnuk for the tribal health agency, the Yukon-Kuskokwim Health Corp. He gets $15 for every bird he samples.

At the tribal council offices, he was on the phone, checking in with hunters. "Got any birds?" he asked Peter, who goes hunting just about every day except Sunday.

"How many?" Danny Mann asked. "Can I come over and check them?"

Mann threw on a jacket, grabbed a blue Nike duffel bag and headed out. As a light drizzle enveloped the village, he strode across the boardwalks that lie across the marshiest parts of town. The hollow sound of his steps echoed in the still afternoon.

The residents of Kipnuk, which means "bend in the river" in Yup'ik, are a little bewildered that their speck of a village has been drawn into the battle against the bird flu virus.