By contrast, parasitaemia in freshly captured wild birds averaged 0.103% (figure 1b), with Plasmodium infections having lower median parasitaemia (0.006%) than Haemoproteus infections (0.239%) (figure 1c). Thus, naturally infected birds showed a greater range of parasitaemia, and had parasitaemia levels about twofold higher than experimentally infected birds during their acute-infection stage.