A male long-eared owl, nicknamed Sunny, was severely injured in February during a Russian kamikaze drone attack on the Ukrainian city of Zaporizhzhia. A passerby found the stunned bird with a broken wing and a blinded eye, and brought it to Dnipro in a box, the Guardian reports.
There, Veronica Konkova is caring for the bird in her living room. “The break was so severe that the left wing had to be amputated. The vet diagnosed a traumatic brain injury. Sunny doesn’t react normally to light,” Konkova told the Guardian. The owl can neither fly nor hunt and instead hops around.
Konkova has been rescuing injured birds since 2015, including a rare imperial eagle, peregrine falcons, buzzards, kestrels, black kites, and various owl species. Sunny shares an open cage with a small screech owl named Plushka. In a few weeks, Sunny is to be transferred to a rehabilitation center in Kyiv.
Russia’s aerial war has had devastating effects on Ukraine’s wildlife. Thousands of birds have become entangled in nets strung up to protect roads near the front from enemy drones.
Source: www.theguardian.com
