As regular CFZ-watchers will know, for some time Corinna has been doing a column for Animals & Men and a regular segment on On The Track... particularly about out-of-place birds and rare vagrants. There seem to be more and more bird stories from all over the world hitting the news these days so, to make room for them all - and to give them all equal and worthy coverage - she has set up this new blog to cover all things feathery and Fortean.

Thursday 12 June 2014

Bird smuggler ‘trying to save animals from Chinese smog’


Man claims he was trying to sneak two birds out of the country inside his trousers in order to protect them from China’s lung-choking pollution

By Tom Phillips, Shanghai

9:00AM BST 09 Jun 2014

A man who was caught attempting to smuggle two birds out of an airport in southern China claimed he was trying to save them from the country’s polluted skies.

The man, a “foreigner” whose name was not given, had planned to fly out of Guangzhou’s international airport to Singapore on Sunday morning, according to a report in the Yangcheng Evening News.

However, at around 9.30am, as he was passing through a security check, staff spotted a ball-shaped object tucked inside the hem of one trouser leg.

On further investigation they found a “small squirming thing wrapped in white cloth,” the newspaper reported. Inside was a bird. A second creature had been similarly attached to the man’s other ankle.

Apparently hoping to come across as an environmentalist rather than a wildlife trafficker, the man used pollution to justify his actions.

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