"So owners of hobby flocks should be very careful to watch for the disease in their birds and they should bring sick or dead birds to the vet," he said in an interview.
Humans are usually infected with the disease through close contact with live infected birds.
Birds shed the influenza virus in their faeces and so contact with it - for example, when visiting enclosures or markets where birds have been recently kept - is also a possible transmission route, experts say.
"Avian influenza has been known for at least 150 years," Giesecke said.
"There have always been human cases but very few deaths. So people do get infected, they get some symptoms, often conjunctivitis and you tell that they have the virus."
