SPARKIE

An early morning call to Australian Seabird Rescue from a fisherman, Gordon came in about a pelican trapped for a couple of days in the cold water channel at the district power station.

My rescue buddy Oliver was unavailable so I asked if Gordon call help me and off I went with ropes and anything else I could think of. Of course the power station is under heavy security with locked gates everywhere so with a band of workers headed by foreman Warren we followed her down. This channel is quite long very deep and about a 4ft drop down straight sides to the water with a grate at the inlet end and a filter at the other end. The poor thing was snookered- we tried everything.

Warren was going to cut a hole in the security fence but I called the Fire Brigade to see if they could help and with a great big thank you to the men we all put our heads together to work out the best plan of action.

She’d turned and swam back to the inlet-now being totally exhausted she could hardly hold her head up.  It was commented there were big fish in there but generally people don’t understand pelicans can’t dive deeper than the length of their neck so she was also starving.

With all the attention she became spooked and squeezed herself through the grate and into the open lake but so unwell she just started drifting. Onto the phone to team member John to bring his hovercraft over she is now safely in care.

This poor bird would have been lucky to weigh 2kilo - she’d been in there a lot longer than 2 days, but a couple more days in care and big feeds of fish she will be back out in the wild.

A big thank you to fisho Gordon, power station, Warren the fire station officer Rod and hovercraft John for their invaluable help.

She is one very lucky bird that so many people cared.

Betty

Sparkie the Pelican