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We’ve finally got a name for our flamingo chick…who shall now be know as ‘Flimgo’!
Some of the suggestions we had were:

• Snowball
• Flimgo
• Flingo
• Harry
• Lucky
• Julian Clarey
• Pinky
• Pinkish
• Fluffy
• Fennella the flamingo
• Phoebie the Flamingo
• John’s little Miracle
• Alice (as in wonderland)

The little guy/girl is now approx 70cm high, fully stood up.

It’s been feeding itself from the lower food bowl provided for just over two weeks now, but is still also being fed by the parents. When they regurgitate the ‘crop milk’, it’s a bright pink colour, this will slowly be reduced by the parents as the chick gets older.

At the moment it still has its grey downy juvenile plumage, but has small primary flight pin feathers developing on its wings, and some pin feathers on its body. This means it’s gradually getting adult plumage, but will still be a grey colour until next year.

It can be seen resting on one leg as the adult Flamingos do and can now swim quite well.

It’s also now large enough to be tucked up overnight in the boat house winter quarters with all the adults, without the risk of it being trampled on, or pecked by other adult Flamingos.

Sponsor our flamingo chick or find out more about flamingos on our website.

‘The Horse at Harewood’ exhibition has been quite a journey of discovery for the curatorial team – although there have always been horses here, and we’re all aware of their role in the history of the Estate and the Lascelles family – we’ve never before placed such a focus on this area of Harewood’s history and the artworks arising from it. The works now on show in the Terrace Gallery were collected from all over the House, some had literally barely seen the light of day for decades, and most have never been seen publicly before. This posed quite a few challenges: some of the works needed conservation and most needed cleaning to remove varnish which has yellowed over the years. Most of all we needed to reconstruct the story of how and why these pictures, and the artists who painted them, came to be at Harewood. We know that the 6th Earl and HRH Princess Mary kept racehorses and even established a stud farm at Harewood, and of course we have photographs of some of their horses too. But there’s a lot of work to do to identify individual horses, reconstruct their racing successes, and piece together the commissioning of the horse portraits now in the Collection. This exhibition is really the start of something, an investigation into part of Harewood’s history, and it’s a rich and exciting area to be working in. We hope to revisit this theme with another exhibition in a few years’ time once we’ve pieced that story together, and had the necessary conservation work carried out, and we also intend to publish a book on the subject too.

Our new website goes live today. What a relief it has been – three months in the planning and eight months in the building! During this time we’ve been writing, sourcing images and working with colleagues on how it should look, feel and work.

We’ve worked hard to make more of the information about Harewood easier to find. Information is, mostly, now only three clicks from the home page. There are loads more images available for people to look at and get a feel of what Harewood is like before they visit.

We’re also integrating social networking sites directly into the website, with both Flickr and our Blog built directly into the website. This provides a direct feedback route for our customers to tell us what they think and also to put their photos up so the world can see them.

I could blather on about all the technical stuff about search engine optimisation and clever things that our agency, BrandNew, have done with the site, but I won’t. I’ll finish with telling you about My Harewood.

My Harewood is our new section whereby Harewood Cardholders and other visitors can tell us what they would like receive in their email newsletters. By choosing your interests in the preferences section, visitors can filter the events, exhibitions and news they see on their My Harewood home page. This automatically updates as new events, news or exhibitions are added.

We’ve also put some ‘not quite accurate’ information into the Did you know section and will be announcing a competition about this shortly. Come back for more later!

Simon Warner is our artist in residence on the Number 36 Bus between Leeds and Harewood during our exhibition ‘Town and Country’ until 20th September. The residency is in partnership with bus operator Transdev Blazefield and Project Space Leeds (PSL), a contemporary art space in Leeds’ city centre. Follow the progress of Simon’s residency and add your own stories and contributions. Simon’s developing work in text, photography and film can also be viewed in the ‘Waiting Room’ at PSL throughout the partner exhibition there. Look out for announcements on the Blog too about other guided walks Simon will be conducting using scheduled bus services.

Did you know that if you come on the bus to Harewood you can get in for half price on presentation of a valid bus ticket?

The flamingos have now laid nine eggs. Four of which are unfortunately not going to hatch. The remaining five are all ok. The big excitement of today is that this is day 28 of the incubation period. Flamingo eggs normally incubate in 27 – 32 days, so we are expecting the first egg to hatch today or in the next couple of days.

The media have been out for a news item with BBC Look North airing on their 1330hrs news and also this evening at 1830. The Yorkshire Evening Post will also be featuring it tonight or tomorrow.

Did you know that you can Adopt a Bird at Harewood? If you would like to adopt a baby flamingo please call 0113 218 1000. All proceeds from adoption go towards our conservation and research activity. Adopting a Bird doesn’t mean that you can take the bird home, but we’ll acknowledge your adoption with a welcome pack, a plaque on the enclosure and send you a twice yearly ‘Stock Press’ Newsletter, as well as invite you to a summer evenings bird adoption evening.