A Canadian tourist who took a flamingo from its habitat at a popular Las Vegas Strip hotel and carried it through the property was found guilty Monday of animal cruelty after prosecutors argued the bird was injured during the bizarre encounter.

Mitchell Fairbarn, of Ontario, Canada, was convicted of felony and misdemeanor animal cruelty charges after jurors deliberated for about five hours.

The case stemmed from a March 3 incident at the Flamingo Las Vegas Hotel and Casino, where Fairbarn removed a 27-year-old Chilean flamingo named Peachy from its enclosure and brought the bird to his hotel room.

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Surveillance footage presented during the trial showed Fairbarn holding the flamingo inside an elevator and carrying it through a hotel hallway as the bird squawked.

Prosecutors argued Fairbarn deliberately caused the bird pain, pointing to footage of him pulling Peachy by its feet and feathers found on the hotel floor.

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Las Vegas police were called after hotel security reported the flamingo missing from its enclosure.

When authorities found Peachy, the flamingo was missing seven or eight feathers, had blood on its feathers and suffered injuries to its wings.

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Fairbarn's defense attorney, Josh Tomsheck, acknowledged his client made poor decisions while intoxicated but argued he never intended to injure the animal.

"He should not have done that, should not have gone into the habitat, shouldn't have touched a bird, shouldn't have taken Peachy inside," Tomsheck told jurors. "The truth is, Mitch was drunk. Mitch was stupid. He made bad decisions."

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Peachy is doing well physically but remains more anxious during veterinary examinations, according to Tiffany Moore, medical director of Lone Mountain Animal Hospital, who treated the bird.

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Fairbarn remains under house arrest as he awaits sentencing on Dec. 1.

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He faces up to four years in prison on the felony conviction and an additional six months for the misdemeanor offense.

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During the trial, prosecutors acknowledged Fairbarn had received death threats following the incident and was unable to return to Canada when his father died while the criminal case was pending.

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Clark County prosecutor Haley Willming argued those consequences resulted from his own actions.

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"None of that would have happened had he not done what he did, had he not made the choices he made," Willming said.

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The Flamingo Las Vegas, one of the Strip's oldest resorts, is known for its wildlife habitat, which houses flamingos, turtles, koi fish and other animals.

Mitchell Fairbarn found guilty of animal cruelty after prosecutors say he hurt and frightened the 27-year-old bird

A Canadian man was convicted of animal cruelty charges on Monday for snatching a flamingo named Peachy from its enclosure at an iconic Las Vegas hotel.

Prosecutors said it was a malicious prank while a lawyer for the tourist insisted it was drunken foolishness not meant to harm the bird.

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© Photograph: LVMPD

© Photograph: LVMPD

© Photograph: LVMPD

Conservation work by RSPB has led to recovery of terns, gulls, plovers and oystercatchers on England’s south coast

The colony of sandwich terns nesting at Pagham harbour, West Sussex, was completely wiped out by bird flu in 2022. But numbers have bounced back from zero to 756 breeding pairs in just three years after conservation work in the Solent.

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© Photograph: David Kinchin Smith/RSPB

© Photograph: David Kinchin Smith/RSPB

© Photograph: David Kinchin Smith/RSPB

While masked lapwings have a reputation for swooping during nesting season, Windsor Park oval’s resident plover just wants a good innings

At Windsor Park in Riverside, just outside Launceston in northern Tasmania, a masked lapwing has claimed prime real estate in the middle of a community sports ground, showing complete indifference to the weekend cricket matches taking place around it.

Warming a nest of eggs, the bird has been affectionately dubbed “Faf Swoop Plessis” by locals – a play on former South African cricket captain Faf du Plessis.

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© Photograph: Tahlia Franklin/Department of Natural Resources and Environment Tasmania (NRE Tas).

© Photograph: Tahlia Franklin/Department of Natural Resources and Environment Tasmania (NRE Tas).

© Photograph: Tahlia Franklin/Department of Natural Resources and Environment Tasmania (NRE Tas).

As Mark Cocker approaches a landmark for the world’s oldest column in an English-language newspaper, he is still inspired by powerful encounters with nature

In the autumn of 1987, Mark Cocker sat in a field near Norwich and watched a jay burying acorns for the long winter ahead. He described the scene in his first country diary for the Guardian. Thirty-nine years on, some of those jay-planted acorns will be mature oaks now, and Cocker is completing his 1,000th diary for the world’s oldest column in an English-language newspaper.

In his next diary, he will reflect on the changing birdlife around Flint Clough, in the Peak District, where he first marvelled at rare birds aged 12 after devouring bird books in his bedroom. As a boy, he would find cuckoo, golden plover, ring ouzel and twite, a once-common bird which is now virtually extinct in England.

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© Photograph: Fabio de Paola/The Guardian

© Photograph: Fabio de Paola/The Guardian

© Photograph: Fabio de Paola/The Guardian

This is the first documented instance of barn owls nesting in Manhattan in modern history, according to one expert, and the owls have attracted nightly crowds of people in the street eager to get a glimpse of the elusive birds.

I had never heard of the delightfully named Hudsonian godwit before this piece—yet, given their achievements, they deserve global fame. These slight, mudflat-loving shorebirds hold the record for the longest nonstop flight, clocking journeys of seven thousand miles or more that one scientist deems “technically impossible.” Rivka Galchen follows researchers from Patagonian mudflats to Alaskan bogs as they try to understand the biology behind these incredible flights. Along the way, she even gets to hold one of our little celebrities, an “otherworldly and wondrous” experience.

Migratory shorebirds are usually not a person’s first bird crush. They lack the supernatural aura of the resplendent quetzal, and they don’t go in for outlandish mating displays like that of the prairie chicken. As the Princeton University biology professor and shorebird-lover David Wilcove put it, migratory shorebirds can give an impression of being “little brown guys, buzzing around in the mud, not too big and not too small, and, whether one is a stint or a phalarope or a knot or a godwit, they’re just kind of there.” And yet, Wilcove told me, they are a birder’s kind of bird. Once people get to know them, they tend to fall in love.

In 2016, paleontologist David DeMar Jr. was crawling across a rocky outcrop in northeastern Montana, hunting for fish fossils, when he spotted a dark, reddish-brown nodule about half the size of a golf ball. He picked it up and looked at it through his hand lens. On its surface was something he didn’t expect: a […]

It is very common to find images of birds in the art of Ancient Egypt. We see them in paintings and sculptures with species of all kinds, from the ducks hunted on the Nile to the ibis that lent its head to the god Thoth, to the vulture that topped the white crown of Upper […]