News
2007-05-22
Gay flamingoes
get foster chick
Carlos and
Fernando, a same-sex flamingo couple famed for appropriating
other birds' nests, perhaps in a desire to become
parents, have
Carlos and
Fernando, a same-sex flamingo couple famed for appropriating
other birds' nests, perhaps in a desire to become
parents, have been rewarded for their tenacity with a
chick of their own.
Keepers at the
Wildfowl & Wetlands Trust in Slimbridge, England,
thought of Carlos and Fernando when another flamingo
abandoned its nest with an egg still in it. When the
egg hatched in an incubator before the pair could take
over, the keepers carefully taped the new chick into a
discarded eggshell before delivering it to chez Carlos and
Fernando.
"Parents usually
first bond with their chicks as they're hatching and
calling from inside the egg," trust officials wrote on their
Web site.
"So to help
Carlos and Fernando bond with their new chick, WWT staff
took an old eggshell, carefully popped the newborn chick
inside, taped it up, and placed it in Carlos and
Fernando's empty nest. The pair were soon seen
'talking' to the chick inside the egg, and a little while
later the chick hatched for a second time—this
time to be greeted by its loving foster parents."
The new family
lives at the trust's headquarters in Slimbridge, near
Bristol, in an estuary of the River Severn that happens to
be the world's only home to all six flamingo species.
The site provides birds to zoos in lieu of captives
from wild populations, which are severely stressed by
urbanization and climate change.
Experts there say
gay flamingos are not uncommon.
"If there aren't
enough females or they don't hit it off with them,
they will pair off with other males," WWT spokeswoman Jane
Waghorn told Agence France-Presse. (Barbara Wilcox,
The Advocate)
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