Obese owl too fat to fly, put on strict diet

An unusually fat owl flapped its wings and flew back to the wilderness after being put on a "strict" diet by rescue workers from a British sanctuary.

The Suffolk Owl Sanctuary has informed in a Facebook post that the bird, which was found stuck in a ditch, had got too fat to fly after feasting on hoards of field mice and voles that were running around in abundance due to a warmer winter in the area.

The owl named as Plump tipped the scales at 245 grams, almost a third more than its peers of the same age and species.

Plump was then placed on a dieting regime and is now back to normal size.

The sanctuary wrote in its post: "This soggy little owl was found in a ditch a few weeks ago. Usually, in these instances we assume injury of sorts that is preventing the owl from flying - occasionally becoming wet causes them to become grounded too - so you can imagine our surprise that when we examined her, we found her to simply be extremely obese!"

Obesity among birds in their natural environment is a rare occurrence, but on the basis of observations that were eventually made by the rescue workers, "this may just be an unusual case of natural obesity! After further investigation, we also found that the area where she was rescued was crawling with field mice and voles due to the warm and wet winter we experienced in December."

A Facebook video that was posted later, showed Plump being released in the wild, flying "off into the British countryside at a much healthier, and happier weight."