The white tern found in Jinyun county in Lishui, Zhejiang province. [Photo/Tide News]

A rare white tern (Gygis alba candida), blown inland by Typhoon Bavi, was rescued in Jinyun county in Lishui, Zhejiang province, on July 12. The bird is normally found on tropical islands in the Indian and South Pacific oceans.

Local villager Li Qingqing spotted the pigeon-sized white bird on a drainage ditch near her home in Yangqiaotou village. The tern was soaking wet, trembling, and too weak to move.

Li carefully picked it up, placed it in a dry room with straw, and called the government service hotline. Forestry officials arrived promptly and transferred the bird to the rescue center, where it was kept warm and given fluids and food. Provincial forestry experts later confirmed the species as the white tern.

According to Wen Chaoran, a monitoring engineer of the Zhejiang Forest Resources Monitoring Center, three white tern sightings were recorded in Zhejiang during the typhoon's landfall that day — the earliest in Jinyun, followed by two in Hangzhou's Qingshan Lake and West Lake.