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FLORIDA AUDUBON SOCIETY
P.O Box 825
Phone MI 7-2615
Maitland, Florida                           

IMMEDIATE  November 30, 1962
NEWS RELEASE

STORK ARRIVES IN FLORIDA BY JET

A welcoming committee of the Florida Audubon Society was present at McCoy Jet Air Terminal the evening of November 30 to welcome a visitor from afar. Aboard Eastern Airlines Jet #805 was a Black Stork, known to the scientific world as Cicconia nigra. Ten days previously this large bird had appeared at the Cape Cod National Seashore headquarters at Eastham, Massachusetts, formerly a Coast Guard Station and a refuge for coastal residents in many an easterly storm. So far as is shown by the records this is the first time a wild Black Stork has been found in North America. The Stork was weak from starvation, exhaustion and cold. Wallace Bailey, Director of the nearby Wellfleet Bay Wildlife Sanctuary of the Massachusetts Audubon Society, traced the bird to its roosting place, and with the help of his wife, Priscilla, and a flashlight, the bird was netted, dined on bay scallops, and put to sleep in the Sanctuary headquarters cellar. Force feeding was necessary for this shy bird and for ten days its diet was liver and fish. Allan Morgan, executive vice-president of the Massachusetts Audubon Society then phoned the Florida Audubon headquarters in Maitland and discussed getting the rare bird to an equable winter climate where it would find the fish, crabs, frogs, and large insects that furnish its normal food. Shipping to Florida followed.

Inspection of the Black Stork for foot callus and frayed feather edges, both indicative of a caged bird, indicated by the lack of these signs that the bird was a legitimate stray on its own power from the Continent of Europe. Perhaps it got caught in a storm wind which carried it over the Atlantic. Three thousand miles is a long journey for any weary stork, now this [[strikethrough]] kind [[strikethrough]] bird has had another thousand miles added by jet plane transportation.  

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