Falcon Bites Off More Than It Can Chew

A falcon was unable to fly after eating an entire hooded gull in Fossvogur yesterday, RÚV reported last night.

Þórdís Bragadóttir was working from home when a loud thud against the garden window distracted her: a gull had flown into the window and killed itself from the impact. She then put the dead bird on a piece of newspaper on the garden table. “I was going to show my husband the bird carcass when he got home,” she said. “It was probably a young hooded gull. He was small and white with a bit of black in his feathers.”

Shortly afterwards, Þórdís heard another thud: a falcon had landed on the table beside the dead gull, and after some thought decided to eat it.

“It ate the bird completely to bits. So when it was finished, it jumped on the back of the chair and sat there for ten minutes. Then it couldn’t fly properly and jumped and fluttered into the yard and kept trying to take off, but it wasn’t working,” she said.

Then Þórdís decided that she would have to contact the police. An experienced police officer was sent out to help the falcon, and did so by throwing a blanket over its head and taking it to the vet. The vet concluded that the falcon was perfectly healthy, but just very, very full. We’ve all been there.

It isn’t as rare as you might think for the police to get involved with bird rescue in Iceland. Earlier this week, an eagle was arrested in the Westfjords; and last month another falcon required rescuing on Suðurlandsvegur.

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