Thursday, 1 March 2012

Transfer of Chileans to new home!

Our Chilean Flamingos (Phoenicopterus chilensis) have been breeding successfully here at Seaview Wildlife Encounter for many years. Every few years we ‘move on’ some of our stock to other Collections in the UK. This enables our numbers to be controlled and offers other zoos and wildlife parks the opportunity to start their own Chilean flock or diversify their existing gene pool.

This weekend, Wingham Wildlife Park are collecting nine of our Chileans for their Collection. We’re really proud to have bred such strong, healthy birds that have been chosen to form the foundation of this new wildlife exhibit. We wish Wingham every success with the future of these beautiful birds and hope that they continue to breed and thrive as well as they have done here with us.

Photos below taken this week of some of our Chileans. The bird on the left with grey plumage is a juvenile hatched last spring. The bird with a mixture of grey and pink is probably two or three years old. It takes up to five years for the grey feathers to disappear completely – this is when the Flamingo is in full, adult, pink and white breeding plumage.

Juvenile Chilean close-up DSC_0406 Just turning pink DSC_0407 Chilean close-up DSC_0409

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