This video has circulated in reports about a seagull being rescued from power lines in the US

This article is more than one year old.
Published on January 29, 2020 at 10:20
2 min read
By AFP Pakistan

A video has been shared hundreds of times in multiple posts on Twitter, Facebook and Youtube which claim it shows a member of the Pakistani Army rescuing a bird from a power line. The claim is false; the video has circulated in media reports about a power company helicopter being deployed to free a seagull from a power line in Virginia, US, in 2013.

The video was published on Twitter here on January 15, 2020.

The post has been retweeted more than 489 times.

Below is a screenshot of the misleading tweet:

Screenshot of the misleading tweet

The one-minute 33-second video shows a person sitting on a platform under a helicopter, freeing a bird trapped on a power line.

An official song of public relations wing of the Pakistan Army, “Pakistan Zindabad”, can be heard in the background.

The post reads: “Pakistan Army at its best ?”

The same video has also been shared here and here on Facebook and here on YouTube, alongside a similar claim.

The claim is false; the video has circulated in reports about a bird rescue operation carried out by a utility company in the Southampton area of Virginia in the US in 2013.

A reverse image search for a keyframe of the video extracted using video verification tool InVID found this one-minute 45-second video published on the YouTube channel of local TV channel WAVY TV 10 on September 19, 2013.

Below is a screenshot of the WAVY TV video:

A screenshot of the WAVY TV video

Below is a screenshot comparison of the video in the misleading posts (L) and the WAVY TV 10 video (R):

A screenshot comparison of the video in the misleading Facebook post (L) and the WAVY TV 10 video (R)

WAVY TV 10 also published a video report on the rescue on their YouTube channel here on September 18, 2013.

The report said the bird had been tangled in the power line for more than 24 hours as strong winds caused delays to rescue attempts by local utility company Dominion Energy.

Bonita Harris, a spokesperson for Dominion Energy, can be heard saying: “What we have to do is send a helicopter with special equipment. It actually has a platform attached to its side and one of our lineman will have to get on the platform and physically reach over to remove the bird from the line.”

The rescue was also reported by UK newspaper The Daily Telegraph here, with the same video.

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