Birds fell from the sky bleeding from their beaks and eyes.
The birds from the cockatoo family are suspected to have been poisoned in South Australia and were discovered after they started falling to the ground from trees and the sky.
Some of the birds were a protected type of cockatoo, long-billed corella birds, and three of them are non-protected short-billed corellas.
Many were already dead when rescuers got to them, and some were writhing around on the ground.
60 birds were rushed to veterinaries after they were found at One Tree Hill, Adelaide. Unfortunately, only two survived while 58 passed away.
The founder of Casper’s Bird Rescue, Sarah King, said to The Guardian that a staff member informed her that cockatoos were “falling out of the trees in front of him, falling out of the sky.”
“When he got there, he rang me, really distressed, and said there were more than he could handle,” she shared.
“Only two or three were actually deceased. The rest were just screaming on the ground. They couldn’t fly any more, they were bleeding out of their mouths…What we were seeing was something out of a horror movie.”
King also said to the BBC: “The birds weren’t able to fly and were lying on the ground wailing in pain. Some birds were bleeding out of their mouth.
“That immediately made us think of poisoning, which we’ve seen before.”
Rescuers believe that the cockatoos were intentionally poisoned. “It’s not an instant death. It causes suffering. It takes a few weeks for it to work. It starts internally and they have internal bleeding. It is a horrific, slow death.
“[And] the birds that have been affected are the protected species of the long-bill corella. It is an important fact to get out there. Of the 60-odd that we found, only three were the non-protected species.
“This isn’t the way to deal with anything. It’s also against the law.”
The South Australian Department for Environment and Water said that the toxin and disease testing is underway. The cause of the poisoning hasn’t been identified.
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