Small bird to fly home on passenger airline

Nearly two years ago, she was spotted perched on an apple tree in Ontario – thousands of miles from her natural habitat – capturing the attention of birdwatchers across Canada.

Now a Bullock's oriole who ended up in the Ottawa area is set to finally fly home to western North America – in the passenger cabin of an Air Canada flight.

The small orange-plumed female was first spotted near the country's capital in late 2015, prompting speculation that she had been blown off her migration route. "It's absolutely fantastic. It's been mind-boggling," Ray Holland, who first noticed the oriole, told the CBC, as hundreds of birdwatchers travelled to the area to catch a glimpse.

Weeks later Mr Holland found the bird lying in the snow, seemingly weakened by a bout of freezing temperatures. The bird was brought to the Ottawa Valley Wild Bird Care Centre, where vets found the female had lost a toenail to frostbite and was battling dehydration and hypothermia.

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As the bird recuperated, the centre began looking into how best to return her to her habitat. Transporting the bird to the US – its main range – seemed incredibly difficult, given federal laws and the export and import permits required.

The decision was made to send her to British Columbia, the northernmost point of the Bullock's oriole's habitat. Doing so would still require special import permits allowing the migratory bird to cross provincial borders, leaving the bird's return mired in a process that could take up to six weeks.

“These laws are there to protect our birds, so people aren’t collecting them or keeping them,” the centre’s Patty McLaughlin explained to the CBC.

“It takes a lot of coordination from a lot of different people to move a bird like this across the country.”

After nearly two years away from home, the bird has been booked on to an Air Canada flight leaving Ottawa airport on Wednesday morning, according to the Canadian Press.

She’ll be accompanied by an employee of the airline, which arranged for a federal transport exemption to allow the bird to make the 2,700-mile journey.

Upon arrival, the bird will be taken to the Wildlife Rescue Association of British Columbia, who plans to place her in an outdoor cage that will allow the bird to acclimatise to the outdoors.

It's hoped that the bird can be released in a week or so and that she'll eventually undertake the journey that was impeded by red tape at the ground level – flying herself to the bird's native wintering grounds in the southern US or northern Mexico.

Guardian Service