An ornithologist who decided to take five while conducting a bird survey in Tasmania could hardly believe his eyes when he spotted a three-footed seagull.
A fluke sighting of a deformed seagull during a lunchbreak has led to Australia's only record of a wild bird with multiple feet or limbs.Only two instances of wild birds with extra limbs had been recorded globally before a recent sighting in Tasmania
Dr Eric Woehler, a veteran ornithologist, has had his sighting of a three-legged gull officially recognised in a science journal The bird was behaving normally, Dr Woehler said, and did not seem to have been shunned by the flock for its gratuitous endowment Ornithologist Eric Woehler was taking a break from surveying birds with a student on the waterfront at Triabunna, on Tasmania's east coast, when he noticed a silver gull with a strange leg.
He managed to photograph the bird, but it wasn't until he examined the photos later that he realised how significant the sighting was."We believe this is the first record of this abnormal leg formation in a wild bird in Australia.After scouring journals and contacting colleagues, Dr Woehler found no record of the abnormality in Australia, and only two other cases in the world.
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