Owl rescued after smashing into wind turbine

By Ben Turner via SWNS

This is the moment a short-eared owl was left dangling 26 feet (eight meters) above the sea after it smashed into a wind turbine.

The bird of prey was making its annual migration to Suffolk when it hurtled into a turbine in a wind farm 47 miles out to sea.

A picture shows its yellow eyes staring at engineers who found the owl with its meter-long wing caught on a greasy cable.

Wind farm workers brought the bird, which was remarkably uninjured, back to the Suffolk coastline for further care.

Dan Goldsmith, chairman of Marine and Wildlife Rescue, which helped recover the owl, said that migrating birds often rest on wind turbines and boats while crossing the North Sea.

"He must have misjudged landing on the turbine and got caught up in it," Dan said.

"Hopefully it's just an incident that the poor bird will put behind him."

The owl is being looked after by volunteers at the Suffolk Owl Sanctuary, who have since cleaned oil from its wings.

The sanctuary plans to release the bird back into the wild within two weeks.

Short-eared owls typically migrate to England's coast in the winter from their regular refuges of Scandanavia, Russia and Iceland.

The birds can often be found in grassland areas of Suffolk and Norfolk.