14 DAY TRIAL // Staff at UK's Longleat Safari & Adventure Park is proud to announce that five Chilean flamingo chicks looked after at this facility are growing stronger every day.
The birds are about a month old. They were hatched in an incubator by keepers at this animal sanctuary, who decided that it was up to them to look after the eggs after the chicks' real parents had abandoned them.
Zoo Borns tells us that, by the looks of it, the chicks came to be orphans because of a thunderstorm that chased their parents away from their nesting area.
Hence the fact that zoo staff now refer to them as “thunderbirds.”
“It’s extremely unusual for all the parents to abandon their eggs at the same time, however the storm was particularly severe and the adults decided to head for cover – leaving us to look after the eggs,” keeper Mark Tye told the press.
Presently, the chicks are white. They'll switch to being as pink as their parents once their bodies accumulate enough red pigment derived from crustaceans and certain plant species.