Ukrainians Rescue ‘Heroic’ Falcon, Russian Drone Kills Rare Pelican

Two very different stories appeared recently featuring encounters between birds and drones in Ukraine. Both, arguably, are propaganda --but both stories tell us a lot about the people who posted them.

Shrike The Defender

Many Ukrainian news sources covered the story of ‘Shrike’ a kestrel who broke a wing fighting a Russian drone. A Ukrainian drone crew saw the encounter and rescued kestrel, who was evacuated first to Zaporizhzhia and then to Dnipro and the Kolibri Veterinary Clinic.

Veronica Konkova, who has been helping birds rescued from the combat zone since 2015, is now looking after Shrike. She says that although the operation on the broken wing was a success, it may not have been carried out in time.

“Because the fracture is not very fresh, most likely it will heal crookedly, so the geometry of the wing will not be restored,” Konkova told me.

If he is not able to return to the wild, Shrike will live at a rehabilitation center along with other rescued birds. Konkova has a stream of patients including other falcons, owls, hawks and even eagles. Meanwhile Shrike is being hailed as something of a Ukrainian hero. As Konkova put it in a Facebook post:

“This brave bird of prey rightly decided that Russian drones had no place on our (and his personal) territory and attacked one of them.”

There are many previous cases of birds of prey attacking and bringing down drones. Back in 2016 the Dutch police even had a unit using trained eagles to bring down drones getting too close to airports or other sensitive areas. However, a year later the birds were retired for a combination of reasons including cost, reliability and concerns over animals welfare. The French military also experimented with eagles to tackle drones.

Wild birds of prey also down drones. A British drone user recently published an ‘picture of a lifetime’ image of a peregrine falcon stooping on his drone. Luckily, he managed to get away without the drone or the bird.

But while peregrines normally attack flying prey and will skirmish with other peregrines, kestrels generally hunt creatures on the ground and are usually on the receiving ends of attacks or ‘mobbing’ by other birds in the air. Does this mean the story about Shrike fighting a Russian drone was fabricated?

A couple of pieces of evidence suggest that the incident really happened. One is that kestrels do attack drones, as we know from a case in China where a kestrel plucked a drone out of the sky and dropped it in a forest. And research shows that kestrels are territorial and will defend their patch.

Konkova notes that this is not the first time she has come across Ukrainian birds attacking drones.

“[The other case] was at the beginning of this year, when an Eagle Owl attacked a drone on its nesting area,” says Konkova. “It was more successful -- the drone lost.”

But the stand-out feature of this story is that the Ukrainians took the trouble to evacuate an injured kestrel and get him to a vet. There as many such stories, and not just from Konkova.

In October 2024 a Ukrainian combat medic found an injured raptor (it looks like a common buzzard). The bird was treated, rehabilitated, and adopted by the unit, and now has its own callsign “Mavik”. The charity UAnimals, which normally treats cats and dogs, reports a black kite which they helped after it was brought in by soldiers. And the 35th Separate Marine Brigade found some baby long-eared owls among trees brought down by a Russian missile attack. A Marine with the callsign Haharinhe took the owlets to Odessa zoo where they were brought up before being released back into the wild in October 2023.

Clearly the Ukrainians care about their wildlife and go to efforts to look after it.

The Russian attitude seems different.

Pelicans In Danger

Video from a Russian FPV interceptor includes – along with hits on Ukrainian reconnaissance drones – an incident where an interceptor closes in on two large birds. It is just possible that these were mistaken for drones from long range, but when the interceptor pilot gets close, rather than breaking off the attack he zeroes in and hits one of the birds.

Posting this on social media is further evidence that the Russians were proud of this feat.

Although initially wrongly identified as a stork, well-known in the area, the birds are Dalmatian Pelicans , an iconic wetlands bird which is a globally threatened species.

The contrast, between saving birds and killing them boasting about it on social media, is stark.

Animal cruelty may strike a particular chord, but the casually brutal Russian FPV targeting of birds is nothing compared to the ‘human safari’ in Kherson where drones hunt down civilians. On July 9^th a Russian drone targeted a grandmother and baby in the yard outside a house, killing both. As with the pelican incident, this was clearly deliberate and calculated. Unfortunately there are very many such cases in Kherson as precision attacks on civilians continue day by day.

There is a long history of propaganda in warfare, and stories of enemy atrocities and the heroism of friendly troops are universal. Modern communications make it easier to check out such stories, but simply what people choose to put on social media can say a lot.

As Maya Angelou put it “When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.”

(You can donate to Veronica Konkova’s work via Paypal at birds_rescue konkovaveronica@gmail.com or follow her patients on Facebook)