New arrival in the Bird Garden at Harewood

Enter our competition to name the new baby Flamingo!

The flamingos at Harewood have laid eggs for the first time in 20 years and the hatching of just one tiny chick so far has been the focus of excitement in the Bird Garden this week.

The Flamingos are one of the most popular species in the Bird Garden here at Harewood. They have a luxury lakeside 'home' – an enclosure created in consultation with the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust, Peter Stubbs our Senior Keeper and Bird Garden Curator John Waller. Take a look at the Harewood uTube channel to hear from both John and Peter.

Their hard work has created a small breeding island for the birds, a water-walking channel, another flat area of soft ground for nesting and a new lake fence. Self seeded shrubs and trees have been removed as well as all steep banking in the area to improve breeding conditions - and it seems to have finally paid off, as the little chick that hatched just 3 days ago is the first one in 20 years!

Flamingos are notoriously sensitive to their environment – a tree blown down in high winds some 20 years ago may account for them not having produced any eggs since.

Flamingo chicks are born with white fluffy feathers and will stay white for a year or so as their adult feathers develop. Take a look at the new arrival on the Harewood Flickr page or on the Yorkshire Post video.

The little chick is already up on its feet and last night climbed out of the nest to take a look around.

The chick will be independent within a year but in the meantime will be looked after by its parents – the female was hatched here at Harewood and is just 25 years old, making her quite a young mum. The father could be one of several, but is thought to be a wild caught male.

Research projects in the flamingos enclosure have had to be put on hold while the Flamingos take care of their eggs – but this year’s work on habitat enrichment techniques by Leeds university student, Laura Hogan, in collaboration with the Harewood team has been a success. Her work using techniques such as wooden cutouts to give an impression of increased Flamingo numbers, water piped to the island to help soften the soil and nesting material placed there has kick started the Flamingos breeding. The next step in the plan was to use mirrors and playback recordings of Flamingo vocalization, but they started breeding before this could be introduced.

You can contribute to our conservation and research work here at Harewood by adopting a bird. All adoption donations go directly into the bird garden budget to offset general running costs as well as fund education, research and conservation projects in the Bird Garden.

We are running a competition to name our new arrival…
Please email us suggestions for a name, suitable for either sex - the lucky winner will officially ‘adopt’ the our little flamingo.

 

You can follow our blog for regular updates and interesting news titbits from Harewood, and find out more about our Chilean Flamingos on the Bird Garden webpages.


Take a look at the Flamingo Resource Centre website where you’ll find videos on hand-rearing and building artificial nests, images of flamingos in the wild, bulletins and news items, species information sheets and details of husbandry techniques.