Special airlift for baby flamingos in peril in South Africa
February 1, 2019 by Kevin Sutherland
In this photo taken on Sunday, Jan. 27, 2019 photo, a rescued flamingo chick is fed at a centre after being rescued from a dried out dam, in Kimberley, South Africa. A special airlift for thousands of baby flamingos is under way in South Africa as drought has put their breeding ground in peril. A reservoir that hosts one of southern Africa's largest flamingo populations is drying up. (AP Photo)
A special airlift for thousands of baby flamingos is under way in South Africa as drought has put their breeding ground in peril.
A reservoir that hosts one of southern Africa's largest flamingo populations is drying up. The flamingo eggs are losing their cool, moist protective cover and their inner membranes are hardening, making it difficult for chicks to peck their way out. Predators such as meerkats, dogs and hawks are nearby, waiting for the exhausted chicks to emerge.
The site is littered with the bodies of hundreds of dead chicks. The cheeps of chicks trapped inside overheating eggs can be heard.
Local and national groups, along with environmental authorities, have stepped in for the rescue operation swiftly organized online and by word of mouth. Bird experts and veterinarians have pitched in.
Local diamond mines paid for an emergency flight to carry the first batch of 900 chicks to the capital, Pretoria. Other batches have been flown to Cape Town and other approved locations.
Three thousand flamingo chicks have been moved in all. Another 6,000 to 8,000 young flamingos remain at the reservoir near Kimberley, active but still too young to fly. If the water levels keep dropping, experts said, the parents might abandon the chicks to save themselves.
In this photo taken on Sunday, Jan. 27, 2019, a newly born flamingo chick struggles to walk on a dried out dam in Kimberley, South Africa. A special airlift for thousands of baby flamingos is under way in South Africa as drought has put their breeding ground in peril. A reservoir that hosts one of southern Africa's largest flamingo populations is drying up. (AP Photo)
The chicks in new homes face a special diet of baby cereal, sardines, eggs, prawns and vitamin supplements.
To simulate parents, feather dusters are placed in the chicks' boxes. Interaction with humans is restricted beyond feeding to minimize imprinting. Infrared lights give warmth.
Some of the chicks' rescuers are already thinking about next year and what to do if drought occurs again.
In this photo taken on Saturday, Jan. 26, 2019 photo, rescued flamingo chicks have access to water at a centre after being rescued from a dried out dam in Kimberley, South Africa. A special airlift for thousands of baby flamingos is under way in South Africa as drought has put their breeding ground in peril. A reservoir that hosts one of southern Africa's largest flamingo populations is drying up. (AP Photo)
In this Thursday, Jan. 31, 2019 photo, a rescued flamingo chick is fed at a centre in Pretoria, South Africa, after being rescued from a dried out dam in Kimberley. A special airlift for thousands of baby flamingos is under way in South Africa as drought has put their breeding ground in peril. A reservoir that hosts one of southern Africa's largest flamingo populations is drying up. (AP Photo/Themba Hadebe)
In this Thursday, Jan. 31, 2019 photo, a rescued flamingo chick is dried at a centre in Pretoria, South Africa, after being rescued from a dried out dam in Kimberley. A special airlift for thousands of baby flamingos is under way in South Africa as drought has put their breeding ground in peril. A reservoir that hosts one of southern Africa's largest flamingo populations is drying up. (AP Photo/Themba Hadebe)
In this Thursday, Jan. 31, 2019 photo, a rescued flamingo chick tries to walk at a centre in Pretoria, South Africa, after being rescued from a dried out dam in Kimberley. A special airlift for thousands of baby flamingos is under way in South Africa as drought has put their breeding ground in peril. A reservoir that hosts one of southern Africa's largest flamingo populations is drying up. (AP Photo/Themba Hadebe)
It can be hard to get noticed when you're a little chick in a big colony, but new research published in BioMed Central's open access journal BMC Ecology reveals that baby birds in need of a feed have individual ways of letting ...
Abandoned penguin chicks that were hand-reared and returned to the wild showed a similar survival rate to their naturally-reared counterparts, according to a study published October 22, 2014 in the open-access journal PLOS ...
Conservationists dressed in crane costumes have helped bring the graceful grey birds back to Britain's wetlands after they were hunted to near extinction as a delicacy in the Middle Ages.
It's not all bad for crow chicks who have to share their nest with an uninvited pushy guest such as a cuckoo youngster. For one, they can sit back and wait for food to arrive while the cuckoo chick does all the begging for ...
NASA's Curiosity rover is busy making new discoveries on Mars. The rover has been climbing Mount Sharp since 2014 and recently reached a clay region that may offer new clues about the ancient Martian environment's potential ...
The mission team called it a "stretch goal" – just before closest approach, precisely point the cameras on NASA's New Horizons spacecraft to snap the sharpest possible pics of the Kuiper Belt object nicknamed Ultima Thule, ...
NASA on Friday gave SpaceX the green light to test a new crew capsule by first sending an unmanned craft with a life-sized mannequin to the International Space Station.
When NFL player Colin Kaepernick took a knee during the national anthem to protest police brutality and racial injustice, the ensuing debate took traditional and social media by storm. University of Kansas researchers have ...
Researchers have found that liquid has structure in certain circumstances, and that this structure significantly influences the mysterious and complex formation of metallic glasses.
Many real-world complex systems include macroscopic subsystems which influence one another. This arises, for example, in competing or mutually reinforcing neural populations in the brain, spreading dynamics of viruses, and ...
Explore further:
'Mum! I'm hungry!' Hungry chicks have unique calls to their parents
Please sign in to add a comment. Registration is free, and takes less than a minute. Read more
Click here to reset your password.Sign in to get notified via email when new comments are made.