Owl rescued after dangling upside down entangled in telephone wire

A tawny owl was rescued by firefighters in Bradford after it was found hanging upside down from an overhead telephone line.

The poor animal – which received the nickname Tony – woke locals with anguished cries last week.

Ronnie Goldwater of the West Yorkshire Fire and Rescue Service said it had been ‘tethered to the phone line by an identity lanyard’.

He said: ‘It was a sad sight when I got there. It was in distress and the neighbours told me it had been there a few hours and ringing the fire service was the last chance to get it down.

‘When it got down, the bird kind of shut down – I’d never seen anything like it.

‘I think it was the stress and being out in the rain for hours, but it wasn’t nice to see.’

Once the bird was rescued, a volunteer – identified as animal rehabilitation volunteer Vikki Clarke – took it to a vet.

The vet, who was a falconer, tended to the animal until it could be safely released into the woodland near where it was rescued.

A fire service spokesperson said: ‘The owl was safely rescued by the team and a volunteer who kindly took the owl to a local vet.

‘Thankfully, the owl wasn’t injured but was a little weak. Thank you to the team and the volunteer at the incident.’

It isn’t the first animal rescue to make headlines for unusual circumstances.