TO plot his escape from the most secure prison in Mexico, Joaquin Guzman, the drug kingpin known as El Chapo, is believed to have relied on countless little birds to whisper information into his ear and help whisk him to freedom, according to The New York Times.

    Now, it appears that at least one of them was an actual bird.

    Government officials visiting Guzman’s cell after his breakout discovered the body of a small bird sitting in his trash can. The bird, they believe, was used to test the air quality of the tunnel through which Guzman vanished — like coal miners who used canaries — according to an official helping to coordinate the manhunt. Officials are calling the bird “Chapito.”

    It was one of many marvels of the kingpin’s escape. The architects of his tunnel gave it lighting, a motorcycle on rails to transport the displaced earth and oxygen tanks. It was built high enough so that Guzman could stand.

    Amazingly, the escape happened while a camera was watching over Guzman. Surveillance video released July 14 by Mexican officials shows the moment he casually walked across his cell, crouched and disappeared through a hatch in his shower.

    The shower itself barely measured more than the 50-by-50-centimeter hole in the floor through which Guzmán escaped. As a sheer feat of engineering its precision was astounding. A slender slab of concrete weighing about 182.3 kg and threaded with metal rebar lay against the shower’s back wall, its removal the final step of Guzman’s escape and the beginning of the 1.5-km tunnel.

    Where Guzman could be hiding out now is anyone’s guess.

    Investigators on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border are searching for signs of the fugitive drug lord, but it’s no easy task, a top Drug Enforcement Administration official said.

    The United States and Mexico are exchanging intelligence — including details from informants — in the manhunt, and the United States is providing technical support, a Mexican official said.

    It’s likely prison workers helped Guzman break out, the interior minister told reporters. Osorio Chong said he has already fired the prison director and other prison officials.

    At least 49 people have been questioned in connection with the escape July 11, a Mexican official said.

    Mexican authorities announced a US$3.8 million reward for information leading to Guzman’s capture.

    They released what they said was a recent picture of Guzman, showing him with a shaved head and face — but without his trademark mustache.

    It’s likely the Sinaloa cartel had spent years infiltrating the country’s prison system, a Mexican official told CNN. Whoever helped in the plot likely had the architectural plans for the prison that pointed them toward the shower area, the official said.

    And this wasn’t the first time.

    Nicknamed “Shorty” for his height, Guzman already had pulled off one elaborate escape from a maximum-security prison. In 2001, he managed to break free while reportedly hiding in a laundry cart. It took authorities 13 years to catch him — closing in as he was sleeping at a Mexican beach resort.

    The Sinaloa cartel moves drugs by land, air and sea, including cargo aircraft, private aircraft, buses, fishing vessels and even submarines, the U.S. Justice Department has said.

    The cartel has become so powerful that Forbes magazine listed Guzman in its 2009 list of “self-made” billionaires. Guzman’s estimated fortune at the time was US$1 billion.

    Guzman has been a nightmare for both sides of the border. He reigns over a multibillion-dollar global drug empire that supplied much of the marijuana, cocaine and heroin sold on the streets of the United States.

    Chicago has labeled him the city’s “Public Enemy No. 1.”

    And Riley, who spent years fighting Guzman’s cartel there, said he’s personally angered over the escape.

    “I spent nearly five years fighting what he was doing to the city, what he was doing to the communities by bringing heroin in and working a business relationship with street gangs,” he said. “For me, personally, it was a milestone to see him in jail. And when I got the call at 2:30 in the morning last Saturday, I about passed out.”

    But no matter what it takes, he said, investigators will find a way to capture him.

    “I am sure his security is probably second to none in the country. But that’s not going to deter us. It didn’t deter us the first time,” Riley said. “This guy is going to be back in jail.”

    Began his career in the drug trade as an apprentice of “El Padrino” (godfather) Miguel Angel Felix Gallardo, who once headed Mexico’s most powerful drug cartel. Guzman founded his own cartel in 1980, quickly establishing posts in 17 Mexican states. Sinaloa, his organization, takes its name from a Mexican state along the Pacific coast long known as a hotbed for drug trafficking. After Gallardo’s arrest in 1989, Guzman inherited some of his territory.

    It was the Sinaloa cartel that perfected the strategy of partnering with Colombian producers to seize control of the entire drug distribution system, becoming the largest brokers for marijuana, cocaine and heroin being transported into the United States, Europe and as far as Australia. This eventually enabled Mexican traffickers to become the dominant players in the global, illegal drug game.

    Guzman is thought to be 56, although there are discrepancies about his age. He is on at least his third known marriage, this to a former Sinaloan beauty queen with whom he had twin baby girls — in a hospital near Los Angeles — in 2011.

    Farmer-turned entrepreneur, Guzman was first arrested in Guatemala in 1993, extradited to Mexico and sentenced to 20 years in prison. Eight years later, he paid off guards and left hidden inside a laundry cart — or, so the legend goes. (Some reports say he merely strode out the front door.)

    Even as he was a fugitive, sightings of Guzman were common. The most frequent tale was that he would enter a restaurant with his henchmen, order everyone to turn in their cellphones, then eat and pay the bill for all those present.(SD-Agencies)

    1. Joaquin Guzman escaped by riding a motorbike on rails though the tunnel.

    2. Guzman shared a photo of him sitting in a helicopter on the Internet after he escaped.

    3. The shower area where Guzman secretly built his tunnel. SD-Agencies