TNT History Archives: "Freebird" Fled Nazi-Occupied Poland (1939)

türkçe links to original Turkish article

(Hürriyet Newspaper, 3 February 2019)




The scientific world has been shaken by a reply from Turkey 80
years after a tagged bird landed here, having left Poland just before
the outbreak of World War II. 

Dr. Emrah Çoraman works as a researcher at the Berlin Museum of
Natural History.  Recently, one of his social media friends sent him
a newspaper clipping from Yeni Sabah newspaper, dated 5 October
1939, with the following headline: "A Poor Unfortunate Bird Has
Come From Warsaw".  According to the article, a youth had found
the bird, which had been shot, in a pasture and brought it to the Yeni
Sabah newspaper office.  The bird had a tag on its leg with the
following information written on it: "G-429218, Warsaw, Poland". 
The Yeni Sabah journalists characterized the bird as "The Bird of
Freedom That Escaped War".

Dr. Çoraman contacted Dr. Kiraz Erciyes Yavuz, an academician
in the Ornithology Research Center of Ondokuz Mayıs University
in Izmir for any information about the 1939 tagged bird and whether
or not a return message had been sent to Warsaw about the bird.

Dr. Yavuz, who is a member of the National Tagging Program
Commission, was able to obtain information about the bird from
his colleagues in Poland, who were quite surprised to hear about
the long lost tagged bird.  But they looked into the matter and
found out that the bird was a "red-backed shrike" that had been
tagged in Lublin, Poland, on 5 August 1939.  (!)

//Ed. Note: Nazi Germany invaded Poland on 1 September 1939.//  





   Migration routes of the red-backed shrike.