Have you ever seen a bird like this?
No, not just a Hoopoe, the colourful birds found across Africa, Asia and Europe—a hoopoe like this.
Yesterday, Reddit user No-Survey3001 posted a photo of a Hoopoe in Dubai with an extraordinarily large beak.
Though other users were quick to identify the bird’s breed, also known as a Hudhud, no one could quite figure out why its beak is so long.
“With such a long beak compared to most woodpeckers, I wonder if they’ve adapted for the deeper reach required for the area here – e.g palm tree’s crevices vs bark deep holes where larvae are?” asked user SeeJayThinks.
Esquire Middle East reached out to some birding experts in the UAE, and they were startled by what they saw.
“I have never seen one looking like this during my 20 years birding the UAE,” says UAE Bird Recorder Tommy P. Pederson, the webmaster of uaebirding.com.
Pederson thinks the most likely explanation is actually a sad one—a virus called the Poecivirus, and a disorder it causes called Avian keratin disorder or AKD, which causes an overgrowth and deformity of beaks.
According to Project FeederWatch, a site run by the Cornell Lab, a team of researchers from the California Academy of Sciences, University of California San Fransisco and the USGS used a new technology to identify the Poecivirus, which had previously been unknown, and believe that it is linked to AKD.
“Following that finding, researchers tested 28 birds with bill deformities and 96 without deformities, and they found that 100 percent of the birds with deformities had the Poecivirus while only 9.4 percent of the birds with healthy bills had the virus,” said Project FeederWatch.
Unfortunately, that means our little friend, who Reddit has named “Gary”, may be suffering from a disorder. Who’s to say for sure? Perhaps Gary is the first X-Bird.
Twitter user @sunj_ said that he’s seen the same bird in the photo in The Greens in Dubai, next to Barsha Heights, so perhaps those out on their next birdwatching walk can keep an eye out for Gary.
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