The fire service said it was called by the RSPCA as the bird was in distress.

BBC: Three crews sent to trapped gull in Norwich

The bird flu, so-called H5N1, has top epidemiologists across the world on edge because of its potential to mutate into a new strain that no one would be immune to and that could easily spread among humans.

FORBES: A Killer Virus Spreads

Widely pegged as the earliest known bird, Archaeopteryx's status was called into question two years ago by Chinese scientists.

NPR: New Study Restores Famed Fossil To "Bird" Branch

Lawrence Witmer, a bird evolution expert at Ohio University, called the analysis compelling.

NPR: New Study Restores Famed Fossil To "Bird" Branch

One officer called to say there was a bird left in a house in the fire's path.

CNN: Rescuers race flames to save pets, livestock

That status was called into question two years ago by Chinese scientists, who proposed yanking it off the "bird" branch of the evolutionary family tree and moving it onto a closely related lineage of birdlike dinosaurs.

NPR: New Study Restores Famed Fossil To "Bird" Branch

Palaeogeneticists at the University of Copenhagen and Michael Bunce at Murdoch University in Perth, Australia determined the half-life after studying a set of 158 DNA-containing bones from an extinct species of bird called "moa" (a feat in and of itself).

ENGADGET: Alt-week 10.13.12: is the Universe a simulation, cloning dinosaurs and singing mice