The epidemiology of avian pox infection and their distribution in natural populations is not well known because there are a number of biotic and abiotic factors that affect their distribution and prevalence . A handful of studies have investigated the prevalence of poxvirus infections in wild birds around the world, most of them based on the visual observation of affected individuals. In continental birds, modal prevalence ranged from 2% to 16% in different bird species, mainly passerines [3,12–16]. The highest prevalence of pox-like lesions has been found in remote islands, such as the Canary Islands, where 50% of lesser short-toed larks (Calandrella rufescens) trapped around farmyards showed cutaneous lesions  or the Laysan albatross in Hawaii with over 88% of the individuals infected in wet years . The prevalence of avian pox may be influenced by human land-use as shown in Galapagos finches  where prevalence increased 8-fold in agriculture areas. The authors argued that changes in innate immune function were correlated to human land-uses types and this may have determined changes in disease susceptibility. Nevertheless, other studies have obtained contradictory results about the degree of infection in urban birds .