Our zoo is home to one of Europe’s largest and most successful breeding groups of greater flamingos. These elegant wading birds usually bring us nearly two dozen chicks each year – and this season even more hatched from their eggs.
We’ve shared updates on this year’s flamingo breeding success several times on our zoo’s website. In early June, we reported that the birds had already started incubating their eggs, and by the end of the month, we announced the first hatchlings. Since then, those early chicks have grown a lot, and more have hatched. Altogether, there are now 27 flamingo chicks being raised here.
This is actually a record. In recent years, the number of chicks per season has usually been between 18 and 23, though there was one year when we had 25. But no one can recall – and it’s possible it has never happened before – a breeding season with 27 chicks.
Even 18, 23, or 25 chicks is quite a lot, so our flamingo flock is one of the largest and most productive in Europe. Thanks to this breeding success, we regularly send young birds to other zoos. Over the years, flamingos born here in Budapest have gone to the zoos in Győr, Nyíregyháza, Veszprém, and Târgu Mureș, as well as to several zoos in the Netherlands.
At our zoo, flamingo chicks usually hatch in late spring or early summer. There are typically several weeks between the first and last hatchlings, and the timing of the breeding season depends a lot on the weather. Occasionally, if conditions are right, the main nesting period can be followed by a second one, but this is quite rare. In 2012, for example, spring arrived so early that most chicks had already hatched by the end of May, and a few pairs nested again, with chicks hatching in early September.
Looking at this year’s chicks, it’s clear they have grown a lot over the past two months. Although there are some age differences of a few days or weeks between them, they are now roughly the same size. Only one chick stands out – much smaller than the others – because it hatched much later, in mid-summer.
At this age, the young flamingos are covered in soft, gray down. Their legs and necks are not yet as slender as the adults’, but they are already starting to look more like them. Their beaks, which were straight at first, now show the distinctive curve of adult flamingos. By the time they are one year old, they will be almost indistinguishable from the adults in size and shape, though not in color: the characteristic pink plumage develops during their second year of life, when they reach sexual maturity.
