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Fostering Flamingos
Replace baby blankets with feather dusters and lullabies with gentle squawks and the Bronx Zoo’s “brooder room” looks—and sounds—a lot like a typical baby nursery. Here, behind the scenes of the World of Birds, clumsy bird chicks in need of a head start learn to waddle or fly, and sing out loud. Fostering the flock is Susan Leiter, wild animal keeper with the zoo for 17 years.
In Susan’s current brood are two groups of Chilean and American flamingo chicks. From the moment they chipped their way out of their eggs, the bird babies—like all youngsters—have been a demanding lot. “Flamingo mothers and fathers raise their chicks together, so as keepers, we need to make up for the attention of two birds,” says Susan.
Heat lamps and feather dusters provide warmth and security, but the bird keepers must also act as surrogate bird parents. They chatter with the chicks, coach them in swimming and walking exercises, and feed them homemade “egg cream,” a flamingo baby formula.
To feed them the creamy vitamin-enriched, egg-based diet, the keepers cradle the chicks’ heads in their hands. This gives them the feeling of putting their heads right up in their parents’ mouths, as they would do in the wild to eat the regurgitated crop milk. “With their parents, they’d have constant contact,” Susan says. “So they like that pressure of being held and patted, of being brooded.”
The chicks haven’t met the zoo’s adult flocks yet, but Susan expects to introduce the youngsters to their groups in a few months. At about 100 days, they will be fully weaned and much closer to the adults’ size. With their long, slender legs and bent bills, they’ll learn to filter feed in the zoo’s ponds. Over the course of the next one to three years, a pigment in their adult diet will gradually turn their feathers orangey-pink. But come wintertime, it will be easy to spot the gawky juveniles finding a welcome place amidst their rosy elders.
WCS and Flamingos
The Wildlife Conservation Society studies and protects wild flamingos in the remote and threatened wetlands of the Caribbean and South America. WCS scientists use satellite technology in order to track flamingo movements and study how the birds use their habitat. In South America, WCS researcher Dr. Felicity Arengo coordinated the first-ever comprehensive count of Andean and James flamingos. The Bronx Zoo’s Assistant Curator of Ornithology Dr. Nancy Clum led the first archipelago-wide survey for Caribbean flamingos in the Bahamas.
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