What is believed to be the first Brown Booby to have landed in Ireland is "exhausted" as he receives intensive care at Kildare Animal Foundation.
The rare tropical seabird was first spotted on the local beach at Greystones, Co Wicklow last Monday.
Bird watchers noticed the bird was becoming weaker each day and it was rushed to ICU.
Speaking to RTÉ News, Dan Donoher, wildlife rehabilitator with the Kildare Animal Foundation said: "We don't know if the bird is male or female but it is very weak and thin and suffering from exhaustion.
"We think it was blown off course by a storm and landed here by accident. It is not used to fishing in cold waters and lost a lot of weight."
The Brown Booby is traditionally found in the West Indies and Cape Verde islands.
This is *amazing* footage taken by a *seven-year-old girl* of the Brown Booby which has twitchers all of a flutter at Greystones beach this evening. More regular habitats are Mexico and the Caribbean 🙌🏻 https://t.co/DOcLsQ1ZsH
— Philip Bromwell (@philipbromwell) July 13, 2020
Mr Donoher said it was early days and they did not want to offer false hope "but we are cautiously optimistic".
He said they had consulted experts in the UK who had successfully treated a Red Footed Booby, a close relative of the Brown Booby.
"They cared for the bird for three months. It’s going to be a long, slow process to get the Brown Booby back to full health.
"We are keeping the bird warm under a heat lamp, it is a sleeping a lot and eating well."
You can keep up to date with the brown booby’s progress here.
Meanwhile, a rare snow-white bird has been spotted in Co Donegal.
The bird, a jackdaw which is a member of the crow family, is fully white due to a genetic abnormality according to Birdwatch Ireland.
Niall Hatch of Birdwatch Ireland described it as a leucistic bird, because it is lacking some but not all of the pigments in its body.
He said that this particular bird is not albino because like all jackdaws, it has blue eyes. If it was a true albino, he said, then the bird's eyes would be pink or red.
Mr Hatch said that the bird, which is understood to be near the Derry border in Co Donegal, is not from a different country. He added that it was hatched with a genetic abnormality, lacking colour in its feathers.
"Birds like this look very beautiful, but at a disadvantage," Mr Hatch said. He said that a snow white bird would stand out in a flock, becoming more vulnerable to predators.
He also said that the more black a feather is, then the stronger it becomes. "White feathers are more brittle, so are much more likely to get wear and tear," he said.
"Jackdaws are extremely intelligent, so they are usually better at learning to cope with any abnormalities," he added.
Reporting Moira Hannon, Mark O'Flynn
