It never
ceases to amaze me what happens to our majestic sea and shore birds through no
fault of their own.
On my usual
morning patrol I spotted a female pelican with a tangle of fishing line on her
wing. So I raced home to get fish and contact team member Oliver to help. We
went back to the harbour to catch and release. Whilst enticing the birds in,
this poor big male pelican hobbled out of the water. We caught him and found a
big hook in the web of his foot, fishing line tangled around his leg and attached
to a spark plug. He also had a hook in his wing. One can only assume that this
was some "bright sparks" experiment (too lousy to buy sinkers) that
didn't work so was just discarded and left lying around to be trodden on by
this unfortunate bird. It could have been a child! It was his lucky day though
and he has been attended to and released. Not so lucky for the female who is
still out there with the line tangled on her wing. This will affect her feeding
as she is unable to preen her flight feathers. But Australian Seabird Rescue
will keep looking for her.
Betty
 |
| Spark plug and line found tangled on a pelican at Berkeley |
No comments:
Post a Comment