Stork detained as spy in Egypt found dead on Nile island - Update

A winged “spy” has been found dead in Egypt, and a local conservation group is crying foul. Egyptian police detained the stork when a resident in Egypt’s Qena province, 280 miles southeast of Cairo, became suspicious after noticing a European wildlife tracker on the bird.



Authorities suspected the bird may have been linked to foreign espionage. The authorities eventually set the stork free, but the bird didn’t get far. The head of Egypt’s southern protected areas has said that local residents found the stork dead on an island in the Nile River, south of the ancient city of Aswan.

A local conservation group said on Saturday the stork, which it had named “Menes,” had been killed. The bird was “was captured and killed, to be eaten by local villagers,” Nature Conservation Egypt said on its Facebook page. “Storks have been part of the Nubian diet for thousands of years, so the actual act of eating storks is not in itself a unique practice,” the group said, referring to the local people.



The “short-lived success story of getting Menes released,” was not enough to keep the bird safe before it left Egypt, the group added. The head of the protected areas, Mahmoud Hassib, denied the bird had been eaten, although he did not know the bird’s cause of death.

Previously.