14 DAY TRIAL // This might come as a bit of a shock, but the odd baby bird pictured above is not the result of some weird genetic experiment gone horribly wrong. Or at least that's what keepers at Chester Zoo in the United Kingdom maintain.
The bird is one of two white-naped pheasant pigeons born at this facility about three weeks ago, and caretakers assure that, once it matures, it will cease being as scary as it currently is.
On the contrary, it will be quite good-looking, kind of like the adult white-naped pheasant pigeon featured in the photo below this post.
Zoo Borns tells us that, because their parents rejected them shortly after birth, the odd fellow pictured above and its sibling are now looked after by staff at the zoo.
“Hand-feeding them is a tricky business but we use a scouring pad to make things a little easier. It gives them something to grip onto to make sure they don’t slip and slide around, helping their feet and legs to develop properly.”
“Normally they’d be on a nest on the ground made up of lots of little sticks and twigs so a scouring pad acts to create the grip they’d get from the nest,” keeper Gareth Evans explains.
For those unaware, this species presently inhabits the Aru Islands in the Maluku province of eastern Indonesia. The International Union for Conservation of Nature considers it to be a species of least concern.
