Earlier this month (2 February) the residents of Calitzdorp in the Karoo became one exotic seabird richer when a local boy named Joseph discovered a red-tailed tropicbird in Bergsig and rescued it from a crowd of curious onlookers before delivering it to a local resident and animal welfare activist, Karen Whitely.
Karoolus on its first day at the Cango Wildlife Range Animal Care Centre.
The bird was then taken over to the Cango Wildlife Range, where it received care from the Animal Care Centre.
There, it was treated to lukewarm baths three times a day— the tropicbird species is used to spending a lot of time in warm water.
The bird was transported to the Southern African Foundation for the Conservation of Coastal Birds (SANCCOB) in Cape Town on Sunday 9 February, where it can receive proper care. Cango and SANCCOB hope it will be healthy and well-adapted enough to be released into the wild again, but the latter is still running the necessary tests.
Image supplied
‘Though we don’t really have the means to house a seabird in the Klein Karoo, we are doing everything in our power to make sure he has the best care whilst with us,’ said Narinda Beukes initially, a zoological director at the Cango Wildlife Range before the transfer.
To find this type of feathery wanderer in the Karoo’s dry semi-desert is especially rare given that it’s a seabird, and one which is generally found in tropical regions of the Pacific and Indian Ocean. The birds are said to spend most of their lives far out at sea, and will usually come closer to land to breed. They commonly breed in the Hawaiian islands and New Zealand, but they can be found as near as Mozambique and the Seychelles, although this is more rare. The last local sighting is believed to be from four years ago when a red-tailed tropicbird was seen in Port Elizabeth.
The red-tailed tropicbird’s native range.
The rescued bird, which was affectionately named ‘Karoolus’, meaning ‘a strong desire or craving for the Karoo’ in Afrikaans, is suspected to have not been lost for long as it reportedly weighed 550 grams when it was found, just a few hundred grams off the tropic species’ average, meaning it hadn’t yet lost too much weight.
‘This story is really a very special one, and has had everyone in such high spirits’ says Cango Wildlife correspondent Mari-Lize Warrington, following the bird’s transfer.
The red-tailed tropicbird (Phaethon rubricauda) can be identified by its white body, thin, elongated red tail streamers and red beaks.
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