Check Out This Heartbreaking Story About The World’s Loneliest Bird Who Fell In Love With A Statue And Ended Up Dying Beside It

Hold a tissue. You’re going to need it.

Jesse

• Published in Animal Stories
• November 29, 2022

Birds are incredibly fascinating. And the good thing is you can never run out of interesting facts about them. This is because there are over 10,000 bird species worldwide, and each one is unique. 

Ravens, for example, are adept at mimicking human speech and sounds. While Bassian thrushes to find food by farting, Budgies catch each other’s yawns.

Despite their differences, there are several things all birds share. For one, they are great communicators. So much so that in ancient Greece, pigeons delivered the results of the Olympic games.

If we wanted to list all the fascinating facts about our feathered friends, we’d be here for a while. That’s how incredible these guys are. 

Speaking of incredible, we found a post on the TIL subreddit where one Redditor shared an article about a gannet who fell in love with a concrete replica and ended up dying beside it.

According to the article, the bird was named Nigel. He had been lured to Mana Island in New Zealand by conservationists.

These conservationists succeeded in doing this by using concrete gannets and loud recordings of bird songs. The aim? To establish a new settlement. 

However, their plans didn’t work as no other gannets came to the island. This earned Nigel the title of "Nigel No Mates - the world's loneliest bird."

For Nigel, he wasn’t lonely. Instead, he formed a close bond with one of the concrete replicas and even fell in love with it.

Surprisingly, even when three other gannets later arrived at the island, he wouldn’t leave the concrete replica’s side. In the end, Nigel died by the side of this statue.

This is definitely an intriguing story that you should take some time to read.

The story of Nigel, the world's loneliest bird, and his unusual love affair

Conservationists succeeded in luring Nigel to Mana island as part of their plan for gannets to establish a new colony

Chris Bell gives us a little insight:

Rocky romance

In Bell's words:

He continued....

Nigel had no interest in real birds

Even after three new gannets arrived the island, Nigel was uninterested

Bell couldn't figure out the exact reason for Nigel's strange behavior

A sad and annoying death

Bell acknowledged Nigel's gift to Mana Island

We gathered the best reactions from the Reddit community:

Seems Nigel was luckier than 52 Blue

An interesting, but sad tale.

Nigel has a competitor for the "World's Loneliest Bird" title

A bird making friends with its own reflection

An interesting theory

Several Reddit users expressed their sadness about the life and demise of Nigel. It was also interesting to see a few others share similar stories involving other animals, like 52 Blue - the lonely whale.

One Redditor, in particular, cited the last Kaua‘i ‘Ō‘ō bird was indeed the world’s loneliest bird and not Nigel. But this claim is up for debate.

How did you feel after reading this story? Let us know in the comments below!

Jesse