Villagers come to the rescue
after icy wings ground hundreds of migrating birds
Agence France-Presse
Wed 21 Mar
2018 18.33 GMTLast modified on Wed 21 Mar 2018 18.40 GMT
What would you do if you
encountered scores of distressed storks covered in ice lying in a snow-covered
field? In Bulgaria, people
have been taking them home.
A cold snap in the north-east of
the country has stranded hundreds of the migrating birds this week, covering their
wings in ice and grounding them.
“I found five frozen storks near
the village road the day before yesterday,” Safet Halil, 53, from the village
of Zaritsa, near the town of Dulovo said on Wednesday. “I took them home, lit a
stove to warm them and fed them fish.”
Halil, a road maintenance worker,
sparked a wave of support on social media on Monday and others in the region
followed his example, with more than 40 birds sheltered inside people’s homes,
garages or barns.
Experts said the frozen wings had
forced the birds to spend the night on the ground instead of perched on trees
as usual.
“It’s the first time that we have
seen so many storks in distress in Bulgaria,” said
Hristina Klisurova, from the Green Balkans wildlife rehabilitation centre in
Stara Zagora.
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