In an effort to get to the bottom of the tale of the dead parrot it appears the saga began at Heathrow airport as far back as September.
It seems that following a check by customs officials and border post inspectors on a consignment of 148 exotic birds from Surinam in South America, the crates containing the birds were sealed, but were not airtight so the birds could breathe fresh air freely during the three-hour journey to Essex.
There a private vet working for the Department for Food, Environment and Rural Affairs, DEFRA, checked the seals on the containers before the birds were recaged in the licensed quarantine facility of the private importer.
European regulations state that imported "captive" birds, which may in fact have been caught in the wild, have to be kept under lock and key for at least 30 days.
However a week later the importer again quite legally introduced a consignment of another 216 exotic from Taiwan, and both consignments shared the same "air space".
Now according to the "co-terminus" quarantine rule, which allows birds from different parts of the world to be quarantined together, that 30-day clock should have been reset to zero so that all birds spent a full month in quarantine.
It now appears that two birds died, one of them being the parrot that raised the initial alarm. The identity of the second bird and to which consignment it belonged is still being assessed.
Tissue material from both dead birds was pooled together and tested for the avian flu virus using a highly sensitive method, PCR, which is capable of detecting just one molecule of the virus.
The initial results, released on Friday was that one or both of the dead birds were infected with the H5 strain of avian flu.