A ‘tropical’ bird with vibrant blue and black feathers fooled people into thinking they had discovered something truly extraordinary.
The bird was found wandering a car park in Carlisle by shocked onlookers who alerted the RSPCA.
But welfare officers soon confirmed the bird was not tropical and was just a regular seagull that had been dyed electric blue.
After trying to clean the blue dye from its feathers, mystery still surrounds what happened to the seagull.
RSPCA officer Graham Carter said he has never seen anything like it in 20 years on the job.
He said: ‘We have similar situations before where gulls have got themselves into trouble after falling into containers of beer, curry or oil.
‘We have also seen situations where some birds have been dyed pink before, but we just don’t know what happened in this case with this poor bird.
‘I wonder if some kind of blue powder has fallen on him and left him in this state. We would really like to hear from anyone who knows how this happened.
‘If it’s a case of the bird falling into a liquid or substance we would really like to know so that we can find the source and make sure this doesn’t happen again.
‘Or if it was done on purpose we would really like to know so we can look into this further. At this stage we simply don’t know if this was an accident or malicious.’
Stephen Wakelin, from Wolfwood Wildlife and Dog Rescue, said: ‘We are doing our best for this poor gull and are hoping that he makes a full recovery.
‘We still don’t know what the substance is but we are concerned that it is affecting him as he is a little dazed and is still unable to fly at the moment.
‘We think he is around two years old. It will take some time for him to go back to normal colour as he will have to moult and grow new feathers first.
‘We are doing everything we can for him and making sure he is safe and well looked after.’
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