You have to imagine this. They just scoot off and leave their unhatched offspring in the nest. Raven parents!, one might say, while the two fleeing birds are knotless flamingos. Maybe the couple was too young for so much responsibility. Maybe this egg was the result of a one night stand, who knows.
There it was, a lone flamingo egg at Whipsnade Zoo, Britain’s largest animal park. Luckily, the animal keepers discovered it in time and put it temporarily in the incubator. Soon after, they foisted it on a childless couple: Hudson and Blaze, two gay flamingos who have raised several orphans. According to the leader of the bird protection team, the two have the greatest competence as adoptive parents: “After the chick hatched, they stayed with it for two weeks, keeping it warm and protecting it from other flamingos, which often fight and jostle for nesting sites,” says Tim Savage.
The two gentlemen even breastfeed the fluffy gray mini flamingo: The nutritious, bright red “crop milk” is produced by both females and males in this bird species, in the digestive tract. “You can often spot the new parents in a group because they pass on so much of their own pigment to their chicks that they become almost white,” explains the bird expert.
So it’s no wonder that Hudson and Blaze are currently a bit pale around the nose – just normal parents.
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