(Credit: Gavan Mack)Ĭlimate models project that some places will get wetter, while others will be drier, so it’s a lose-lose outcome for these shallow habitats. Once sufficiently grown, the flamingos were ready to be released back into the wild. But these wetlands are some of Earth’s most threatened ecosystems. These are the conditions flamingos evolved under, says Felicity Arengo, associate director of the Center for Biodiversity and Conservation at New York’s American Museum of Natural History, and a coordinator for the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) flamingo specialist group. If one wetland dries up or runs out of food, they’ll move to another one. Water levels and resources fluctuate, but the birds are adapted with a nomadic lifestyle. Lesser flamingos also breed at salt pans, a similar kind of “here today, gone tomorrow” wetland that collects salt.
AFRICAN FLAMINGO LAKE FULL
They’re full of this sodium-rich combination of minerals called sodas, including sodium bicarbonate, which we know as baking soda. But it’s not the only lake like this that the birds frequent some of their other favorite breeding sites are chemically similar to Natron, called soda lakes. Lake Natron is named for the mineral, natron, that collects there. But more often, much of the lake bed is dried up, covered with a bizarre red crust. At its wettest, it’s 35 miles long - bigger than Lake Tahoe. The most important of these sites is at Lake Natron in Tanzania, where about three-fourths of the entire species gather to mate. Lesser flamingos are colonial breeders, which means they arrive at breeding sites by the tens of thousands to build their nests and raise their young. That’s because the species breeds at only six different wetlands in the world. Adapted to PerilĪlthough lesser flamingos are the most abundant flamingo in the world, with a population in the millions, they’re also one of the most in danger of extinction. Now, researchers are realizing that this effort to save the birds will also provide them with a rare chance to learn more about this near-threatened species’ mysterious behaviors in the wild. And organizations around the world with experience raising flamingos, including many zoos in the U.S., sent resources, supplies and even people - like Grendzinski - to aid in the effort. Ten local conservation groups each agreed to take in hundreds of chicks. Rescue centers took in almost 2,000 chicks. … And we were running - sitting down was not an option.”
“ overwhelming - in a good way,” says Grendzinski, who has raised wild birds at the National Aviary in Pittsburgh for 25 years. Scenes like this were common during the flamingo rescue effort that took place earlier this year.
And there are so many birds, volunteers have to feed them around the clock in shifts, mixing endless shakes and bringing in a new group of chicks as soon as one is finished. To keep the orphans warm, their rooms are heated to a balmy 86 degrees Fahrenheit. The bird opens its mouth eagerly as her syringe squirts out a kind of warm shrimp milkshake. Teri Grendzinski reaches into a pen and plucks out a fluffy, pale gray chick.
The incessant “eep, eep, eep” of hundreds of hungry flamingo chicks bounces off the concrete walls of a feeding room at the Southern African Foundation for the Conservation of Coastal Birds (SANCCOB) wildlife sanctuary in Cape Town, South Africa.
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