Blinded and broken, Sunny the owl becomes another casualty of Russia’s war | Birds

Russia sent kamikaze drones to attack the Ukrainian city of Zaporizhzhia in February. They crashed into buildings and killed many people. One of the unreported victims of the bombing was a male long-eared owl who was blind in one eye and had a badly broken wing. A passerby picked up the stunned bird, put it in a box and took it to the city of Dnipro.

The owl, nicknamed Sunny, is now recovering in a cozy room belonging to Veronica Konkova. No longer able to fly or hunt, Sunny instead hops around.

Konkova said: “The fracture was so bad that her left wing had to be amputated. The vet diagnosed brain trauma. Sunny does not react normally to light.”

The owl will stay at the volunteer’s home for several weeks before being transferred to a rehabilitation center in Kiev.

Biologist Konkova has been rescuing injured birds since 2015, a year after the Kremlin launched its secret war in the eastern Donbas region. Its birds include a rare imperial eagle, peregrine falcons, buzzards, kestrels, black kites, and a variety of owls: small, short-eared, and tawny.

Next to Sunny, perched behind an open cage, is a small, wide-eyed owl named Plushka.

Russia’s air war has had a devastating impact on Ukraine’s wildlife, including birds. Thousands of people were caught in networks set up to protect roads near the front line from marauding enemy unmanned aerial vehicles.

“When birds are stuck upside down for a long time, they die of dehydration or heart attack,” Konkova said. Others died due to explosions, fires and pollution.

Owls often get caught in nets while hunting at night. They also become entangled in thin fiber optic cables from Russian drones; In some parts of the battlefield, the wire can cover areas hundreds of meters wide.

Konkova said, “Sometimes we can save these birds. Sometimes they come in such a bad condition that there is nothing we can do.”

The war affected nature reserves, which are important breeding grounds for migratory species.

Moscow has repeatedly targeted six hydroelectric power plants and reservoirs along the Dnipro river. In 2023, the Russian military blew up the Kakhovka dam at the base of a Soviet-built waterfall, causing massive flooding and destruction. Since the disaster, Ukrainian engineers have kept water levels in the reservoir low.

According to the ornithologist Oleksandr PonomarenkoAs a result, the floodplains dried out: “We are losing the feeding areas of the birds. The area is shrinking. It gets very hot here in the summer, 30-35 degrees. And that’s why only bare mud remains instead of water. It gets terribly hot. The molluscs inside die, the algae die. A large part of the food sources of the birds disappear. Species that used to fly do not come here.”

Ponomarenko compiled a list of lost birds in the Dnipro-Oril nature reserve, where he served as senior researcher. Among them were two species of teal, ferruginous ducks, golden-eyed and white-fronted geese.

He said: “The goose is a very intelligent and cautious bird. They hear the shots, understand what is happening and just take a wide route around the front line. Spring migration is almost non-existent now.”

White storks – A national symbol in Ukraine – I suffered. One third of their nests are empty. “The stork sees that the foraging area is dry, free of frogs, snakes, nothing. That’s why it doesn’t settle,” Ponomarenko said.

The bird adapted by breeding in landfills and feeding on mice and rats. Dozens of storks can be seen in garbage dumps outside Ukraine’s second-largest city, Kharkiv, and near the riverside town of Samar. Ringed ouzelles and black storks We returned to Chernobyl.

There is other good news, too. On a cold and windy day last week, 3-4 grebes were seen. Dnipro-Oril reservetheir numbers are increasing. Yellow-legged gulls, a sandpiper and a newly returned swallow soaring low over the water could also be seen. “I saw about 60 swans recently. You don’t notice that many geese anymore, but in the autumn there are a lot of ducks,” said ranger Mykhailo Petronko.

Following Vladimir Putin’s large-scale invasion in 2022, the Ukrainian government banned hunting and hunters released thousands of pheasants. Now it can be seen and heard not only in the countryside, but also in city gardens, calling out from the yellow feathery grass. In addition to roe deer and badgers, quail and partridge also benefited from the hunting ban.

Dmytro Medovnyk, a soldier and bird watcher, conducted a scientific study While fighting in a village in the eastern Luhansk region in 2024. He found that goldfinches and greenfinches took food from destroyed grain stores, while raven and robin populations declined due to reduced food availability and noise pollution. Herons and mallards flew away.

Ponomarenko described the situation for birds living in war zones as “complex.” “Different species respond differently,” he said. Fires caused by artillery shells destroyed the habits of many woodpeckers. Swallows and swallows, on the contrary, continue to breed in some frontier areas, even nesting in half-demolished houses. Creative species such as jays have begun using discarded fiber-optic cables as nest linings, according to Ponomarenko.

Ukraine’s environment ministry was abolished last year and transferred to the ministry of industry and agriculture. Environmentalists say protecting nature is seen as a low priority. “The government does not help, but it does not create problems for us either,” Konkova said. He stated that bird watching is popular in Ukraine. live broadcast of a sitting white stork In a nest in the Poltava region.

When Konkova returned to her home in Dnipro, she showed Sunny’s food: a dead lab mouse stored in the downstairs freezer. The mice were $2 each. The other owl, Plushka, prefers cockroaches and eats 18 to 20 live cockroaches a day. Insects are kept in a plastic box in the kitchen. Konkova says neither owl can be returned to the wild, but both should survive after treatment. This includes daily deworming medication administered via syringe into Sunny’s beak.

Konkova, originally from occupied Crimea, said she hated what Russia was doing to her country. “They are destroying their environment and our environment,” he said, but added: “Overall, I’m optimistic because nature will still win. Birds lived millions of years before humans. I think they will live millions of years after humans.”