This story is a bit old, but popped up in today's news.
From The Telegraph
Comedian took advice from expert at London Zoo before releasing female Eurasian eagle-owl into local forest
Bill Bailey has revealed how he bought a caged owl from a restaurant in China and set it free in a forest.
The comedian and Strictly winner, 59, has released a memoir titled My Animals and Other Animals, a chronology of his life hinged around all the animals he has met along the way.
Bailey told BBC Breakfast: “We were travelling through China in Guangdong province and we went to a restaurant, and I was with the family, and there was an owl in the restaurant.
“It was never really explicitly mentioned whether it was going to be eaten or whether it was for, you know, demo purposes.
“It was in a cage alongside a lot of other animals, and we felt sorry for it. So we said, we have to get this owl out of here. We offered to buy it off them, and then they were quite happy to sell it to us.
“We bought the owl, and they taped it up and put it in a box, and we carried it off in a taxi to release it somewhere.”
After phoning an owl expert at London Zoo from China, Bailey said they had found a forest, adding: “We let it go and it flew off. It was a wonderful moment.”
In the book, Bailey says the owl was a female Eurasian eagle-owl, and he paid 400 yuan for it, which is just over £40 today.
According to the Peregrine Fund, which works to conserve birds of prey worldwide, the Eurasian eagle-owl is “among the world’s largest owls”, its “pumpkin orange eyes and feathery ear tufts make them one of the most striking owls in the world”.
