But Friday was still able to fly and swim and evaded several rescue attempts after getting “spooked” by human attention.<\/p>\n
Local pelican enthusiast Julie Dunn finally caught Friday on her second attempt.<\/p>\n
“She does have a fair bit of feather loss on her neck as she’s been preening and trying to get that tar out of there,” Ms Dunn said.<\/p>\n
“But her eyes are not as swollen anymore, which is fantastic.”<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
A pelican, named Friday, has been captured 18 days after a Boral bitumin spill in Cairns port.\u00a0 (Supplied: Natasha Louise Moore)<\/p>\n
Tarred and feathered<\/p>\n
Ms Dunn said close inspection revealed hard tar caked into Friday’s feathers.<\/p>\n
“She’s got a pretty good chance now,” she said.<\/p>\n
The rescue was a joint effort.<\/p>\n
FNQ Wildlife Rescue volunteer Nandalie Wheaton had been monitoring daily tides, conditions, and the regular squadron of pelicans on the mudflats.<\/p>\n
Ms Wheaton had to control the crowd of people on a busy Cairns Esplanade on Friday morning after intelligence revealed the bird was within grasp on an outgoing tide.<\/p>\n
“As soon as people see someone down on the mud, they come over for a look,” she said.<\/p>\n
“Many people have dogs, and we don’t want the pelicans frightened.”<\/p>\n
She said the tactic was to remove all distractions so the pelicans could concentrate on the bait.<\/p>\n
Ms Dunn laid two traps, consisting of rope nooses on the mud, and lured the dozen birds with dead fish.<\/p>\n
And just after 8am, Friday stood inside the rope noose.<\/p>\n
“Julie shouted at me, ‘Quick, grab the snare.’ Then I held the rope so she can go get the bird,” Ms Wheaton said.<\/p>\n
Boral told the ABC it had no update on the spill, and that the Queensland Department of Environment, Tourism, Science, and Innovation was the lead clean-up agency.<\/p>\n
The department has been contacted for an update.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Wildlife rescuers are rejoicing after the dramatic capture of a pelican that was tarred in a bitumen spill…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":219850,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[64,63,134073,115741,99,134072,31801,90242,134071,134070,1044,90243,13749],"class_list":{"0":"post-219849","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-bitumen-spill","11":"tag-boral","12":"tag-business","13":"tag-environmental-disaster","14":"tag-far-north-queensland","15":"tag-fnq","16":"tag-gbr","17":"tag-gimuy","18":"tag-great-barrier-reef","19":"tag-marlin-coast","20":"tag-tropical-queensland"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219849","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=219849"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219849\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/219850"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=219849"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=219849"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=219849"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}