West Nile Devastated U.S. Bird Species

West Nile virus or a similar disease could wipe out many of the U.S.'s backyard birds, profoundly changing some of the country's most familiar wildlife and ecosystems.

That's the finding of a new analysis of 26 years of data from the national Breeding Bird Survey—data that reveal the dramatic effects of the 1999 arrival of West Nile virus in the U.S.