August 2009
"There Once was an Ugly Duckling with Feathers all Stubby and Brown..."
Okay, so these words from the well-known children’s song don’t quite apply to the newest chicks to be born at Longleat as these guys are small, fluffy and pretty cute. Like baby swans however, they don’t really look much like their parents… they’re not pink, they haven’t got hooked bills and they haven’t even got the longest of legs… are they really flamingos?
Longleat keepers are delighted to announce the birth of three flamingo chicks which have all hatched out over the last four weeks.
Longleat has held Chilean Flamingos since 2003 and this is the first year that they’ve had chicks. The parents pile mud into a 40-50cm high mound and then the mum forms a hollow at the top into which she lays the egg. Both of the parents would then normally take turns at sitting on the egg and it would hatch out around 28 to 31 days later.
Mark Tye, Head of Section reported “The chicks are covered in grey downy feathers for the first few years of their life. Their beaks are straight at birth so
that they can be fed a regurgitated fatty, protein rich liquid by the parents. After a few months the beak will curve.
“We don’t expect their legs to grow for a few more weeks. They’ll then go through a slightly odd looking phase with little grey bodies stuck on a pair of stilts. The pink colouration will normally then appear at around three years”.
The Chilean Flamingo is one of six members of the flamingo family. Like all flamingos, it has the ability to lock its “knees” (which are really their ankles) and stand on one leg. Standing like this will help them to conserve heat as they can hook one leg under their body. They will generally stand facing into the wind or rain so that the water does not get into their feathers.
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BBC
Animal Park
