Adjutant stork injured in zoo fight

Tuesday, May 05, 2009

Mumbai: Merely 10 days after Shakti, an hippopotamus, met with an untimely death due to respiratory failure at the Byculla zoo, an adjutant stork, another resident of the zoo, narrowly escaped a similar fate on Sunday morning.

The bird, which is an endangered species featuring in the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN) list, severely injured its neck in an infight and had to undergo a two-hour surgery in the zoo hospital, said Yuvraj Kaginkar, hospital manager, SPCA hospital.

The surgery, which included packing up the stork’s neck muscles and suturing its delicate skin from the head to neck was done by hospital vet and surgeon Dr Sanjay Tripathi along with Kaginkar.

“We had to make about five to eight sutures and the injury was on a very tender spot. Storks have very delicate and thin necks. Besides, the bird was in tremendous shock and had lost a lot of blood. Considering all that we had to conduct the surgery with utmost care,” the doctors said.

According to Tripathi, in-fights are common among these species of storks in this season. “It’s their breeding season and they often get into fights,” he said. However, Kaginkar opined, “At such times, it’s advisable to keep these birds in separate enclosures so that no harm is done.” The stork is currently said to be out of danger and recuperating in the zoo hospital.

Meanwhile, animal lovers reiterated that the stork fight was a result of bad governance in the zoo. “In the past too, I have seen a heron in an injured state in the display enclosures. Birds with drooping wings are common here. Recently, I saw a monkey eating chips. The problem here is that the enclosures don’t have enough caretakers overseeing the inmates,” said Sunish Subramanian of PAWS-Mumbai.

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