You often hear about hailstones destroying crops and smashing windscreens, but the recent storm in Albacete killed 200 flamingos. Some sources put the figure at 300.

The Laguna de Pétrola in the province of Albacete is a strong tourist attraction precisely because of the flamingo colony there.

Besides the flamingos that were wiped out by hailstones the size of golf balls, a further 67 are ‘fighting for their lives’ in the care of an animal protection society.

The environmental services called upon the Servicios Especiales de Prevención y Extinción de Incendios (the equivalent of the Andalusian Infoca) because they needed boats to collect the scattered bird corpses out on the lake.

The lake is extensive but not deep, so the boats were needed more as floating containers rather than transport.

This is not the first time that this kind of incident has occurred on the said lake because back in 2010 a total of 80 flamingos were killed in a hailstorm.

(News: Laguna de Petrola, Albacete, Castilla la Mancha – Photo: FoxR )