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29 March 2024

Pelican with Israeli tag captured in Saudi

(SUPPLIED)

Published
By Staff

Farm workers in Saudi Arabia captured a large pelican with an Israeli plastic tag fitted to its leg, the third such incident in the Gulf Kingdom in three years.

The expatriate farmers were going to work at their farm in the northwestern town of Sakaka when they saw a flock of pelicans inside the farm.
Sabq newspaper quoted the farm owner Abdul Aziz Al Adheed as saying the birds flew away when his workers came close, except one.

“They told me that the bird was inside a pit and could not escape when they tried to catch it…I found that a tag was tied to its right leg reading ‘University of Tel Aviv…Israel’…there was also a number tied to the other leg and I also found a tiny GPS device under its wing ,” Adheed said.

In late 2010, Saudi Arabia said a local man captured a falcon in the northwestern town of Hail fitted with GPS transmitter bearing the name Tel Aviv University.

The vulture, which can have a wing span of up to 265cm (8ft 8in), was caught by a Saudi using a dead sheep as a bait after the bird landed near the town.
Israeli experts have said such a device only receives and stores basic data about the bird's whereabouts, and about its altitude and speed.

A year later, a falcon with an Israeli plastic tag fitted to its wings was reported to have rammed into a car travelling on a motorway in Saudi Arabia before it was captured.

The bird was caught by a Saudi man who was driving his car in the morning on the road near Hail, one of the closest Saudi areas to Israel.