Sharpshooter

We’ve all heard of ET phoning home but you wouldn’t expect a white stork to make hours of phone calls, at least according to his tracker

When a tracking device on a bird stops signalling, there can be a number of technical causes. Or it may be due to something nefarious. The raptorphiles are convinced that human interference is to blame. To this end, they sometimes quote figures showing that a transmitter fitted to raptors in Scotland has an unusually high failure rate. This does seem rather damning. I hope nobody will think I am giving comfort to wildlife criminals when I highlight the extraordinary case of Kajtek, the white stork.

This noble bird was tagged and named by a Polish environmental group called Ekologiczna as part of a study into migration habits. Last summer, the group placed a mobile phone tracker on the stork. They monitored it over the winter as it flew 3,700 miles from eastern Poland to the valley of the Blue Nile in Sudan. Once there, in February, it seemed to stay put well into spring. This delay in going home was unexpected. Then things got downright weird, as a representative of Ekologiczna explained to the Polish media: “Unusually, Kajtek’s signal remained in Sudan until April, when it suddenly disappeared. Then, a month later, we received a phone bill for more than 10,000 Polish zloty [just over £2,000]. This surprised us until we realised that somebody in the Sudan must have found the stork, removed the SIM card from its tracker, then put it into their own phone and used it to make phone calls.

“The phone bill shows that they made more than 20 hours of calls and, though we are appealing against the charge, our charity will probably have to pay.”

So somebody in Sudan got both a free meal and a free SIM card. We mustn’t laugh. And I do hope no miscreant in this country gets any funny ideas.

Trouble bruin

In a recent column (Sharpshooter, 8 August) about a horse-munching bear in the Pyrenees, I asked what you were supposed to do if confronted by the bruin; say “shoo”? It seems I was somewhat prescient. A brave young Frenchman did indeed run into a Pyrenean bear just the other day. I am glad to say that he lived to tell the tale.

Luc Meurlet, 22, set off alone to scale a Pyrenean ridge near the French-spanish border, leaving his family walking nearby. Luc stumbled into the vicinity of a brown bear, one of 43 that are known to inhabit the area, which is subject to an Eusponsored reintroduction programme. Unfortunately, this particular bear happened to have cubs.

Luc tried to run but the bear came for him at lightning speed. “She charged at me twice, the third time she opened her mouth wide. It was like a scene from a horror film,” he told the local radio station. “I saw my life flash before me. Faced with a bear with paws as big as your thighs, you freak out. I spread my arms and tried to intimidate her. I found it within me to show the bear that I wanted to keep my life. I screamed at her with all my strength. And the bear actually took a step back and left.”

Poor Luc then hid in a bush, from where he was later rescued. He must have been scared witless. I wouldn’t blame him if he did what bears do in the woods…

“Somebody must have removed the tracker’s SIM card, then put it into their phone to make calls”