AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - A bird with a penchant for 17th century Dutch art has paid the ultimate price for flying into a museum gallery and pecking a hole in a masterpiece.

"We tried everything to catch the pigeon and called in experts to grab it, but in the end they had to shoot it out of the air," a museum official said.

The other victim, Thomas de Keyser's 1633 painting of a civic guard was restored and put back on display on Thursday.

"It's one of the more important 'civic guard' pieces," said the official, referring to the city watchmen depicted in the work. "Luckily the hole was in a shadowy part of the painting and not in one of the guards' faces."

A modern-day security guard was forced to spend the night in the Amsterdam Historical Museum's elegant 11-meter high gallery because the burglar alarm had to be switched off in case the pigeon triggered it.

He tried in vain to catch the bird but could not stop it from pecking the hole in the top left corner of the work.