WHILE residents across West Somerset grapple with the rising cost of energy, fuel, and food, Exmoor Zoo conservation centre has been landed with its largest-ever bill, one that it will never be able to pay.

It arrived in the form of a four-feet tall shoebill named Abou.

Shoebills have one of the largest and most unusual bills in the bird world, causing them also to be known as whale heads.

They are at home in the swamps and marshlands of East Africa hunting fish and small invertebrates.

Abou came to Exmoor from Pairi Daiza, a privately owned zoo and botanical garden in Belgium, where she was born and bred.

Exmoor Zoo co-partner Danny Reynolds said Abou was ‘a spectacular, rare, and very special bird that we will cherish’.

She added:“She has come to Exmoor Zoo as we have good experience with wetland birds and as an extremely rare species she fits in with the ethos and aims of the zoo conservation trust to care and look after rare and endangered species.”