Slimbridge WWT Slimbridge WWT

zoogiraffe

zoogiraffe

Well-Known Member
Have opened up an amphibian exhibit just before you go out to see the ducks and flamingos etc,the species are as follows Great Creasted Newt,Pool Frog,Common Toad,Marsh Frog, American Bullfrog(this is the albino frog that used to be at the now closed wildwalk@bristol),Yellow-bellied Toad,Midwife Toad,African Clawed Frog,Alpine Newt,European Tree Frog,Yellow-banded Poison Frog,Green & Black Poison Frog, Golden Poison Frog,Blue Poison Frog,Splash-back Poison Frog,Axolotl and Cane Toad.Also next year they will be getting Beavers and Otters and building a small native mammals house this is due to open around Easter.
 
Apparantly, efforts are made to concentrate all the remaining Andean Flamingo's in Europe into one large colony. All i heared was that the Planckendael (Belgium) animals allready moved there, and the Wuppertal animals (only 2) not (yet?).

I don't know to which collection yet, but the most likely candidate by far seems to be Slimbridge to me. Anyone know anything about the animals there (and specifically, how many Andean flamingo's are there)? Hopefully, they'll get the flock large enough to stimulate breeding.

Too bad they are now disappearing from different zoos, but if we want to keep this species in the future, this sounds like the only way forward (and an excellent initiative, don't get me wrong!).

Btw, Berlin seems the only other collection to house this species, does anyone know any other individuals in Europe? (UK or anywhere else?).
 
That's good news about the Andean Flamingos, (tho not if Slimbridge has the best breeding record in europe)...hopefully a larger number will kickstart the colony.

Does anyone know about the remaining numbers of James's at Slimbridge? Some collections house mixed species groups and all seem to benefit from the larger numbers, I wonder why slimbridge doesn't do this?
 
johnstoni said:
That's good news about the Andean Flamingos, (tho not if Slimbridge has the best breeding record in europe)...hopefully a larger number will kickstart the colony.

Does anyone know about the remaining numbers of James's at Slimbridge? Some collections house mixed species groups and all seem to benefit from the larger numbers, I wonder why slimbridge doesn't do this?
Click to expand...

Hybridization

Better way would be to use mirrors...
 
jwer said:
Apparantly, efforts are made to concentrate all the remaining Andean Flamingo's in Europe into one large colony. All i heared was that the Planckendael (Belgium) animals allready moved there, and the Wuppertal animals (only 2) not (yet?).

I don't know to which collection yet, but the most likely candidate by far seems to be Slimbridge to me. Anyone know anything about the animals there (and specifically, how many Andean flamingo's are there)? Hopefully, they'll get the flock large enough to stimulate breeding.

Too bad they are now disappearing from different zoos, but if we want to keep this species in the future, this sounds like the only way forward (and an excellent initiative, don't get me wrong!).

Btw, Berlin seems the only other collection to house this species, does anyone know any other individuals in Europe? (UK or anywhere else?).
Click to expand...

It is great news about the Andean flamingos. I think this is the only way to maybe save this species for european zoos, there are so few remaining. According to some photos I saw in net there could be 20-25 Andean flamingos at Slimbridge. But I hope somebody here in the forum has visited this place and could write a short review..?

Besides Berlin there should be 1 individual bird at Eskilstuna according to ISIS. I am not aware of any other "continental" collection holding these birds.
 
Slimbridge bred Andean flamingo last year, but Berlin also breed them every other year, and they also irregularly breed their James flamingo too, in fact they are the only collection in the world ever to have bred James flamingo, would it be worthwhile bringing these two groups together also?
 
One of my favourite birds up there with kagu and shoebill, now shoebill, he said going off track would be an ideal species for Slimbridge
 
I know ISIS only list three, but then I'm not sure how correct this is as they don't list all their other flamingoes, including the andeans, on ISIS.

I don't think hybridization is as bigger a risk as you would expect. It is pretty obvious to a flamingo keeper if two species have paired up, and eggs can be substituted etc.
 
I heared the Planckendael animals went to a private collection in Germany, who now keeps 10.8 Andean Flamingo's. Apparantly there are more of them around on the continent. Finger's crossed they'll breed there!
 
I heard Andean and James flamingos fare poorly due to their suspectibility to diseases. They come from saline lakes in high Andes and have rather poor immune system. The same problem is with keeping Antarctic penguins.

In Berlin, they are/were kept in very small aviary, where they occassionally bred.
 
I've added a couple of pics of the new aviary to the gallery, taken on a visit yesterday:

Entrance
Interior

It's built onto the side of the Lesser Flamingo house and is very attractive. There's about half a dozen of each species and it's "walk-in" rather than "walk-through".

There's a decent patch of unused land that you can see beyond the aviary and it did seem like they could have made it quite a bit bigger (and properly walk-through) without too much extra expense.
 
robmv said:
I've added a couple of pics of the new aviary to the gallery, taken on a visit yesterday:

Entrance
Interior

It's built onto the side of the Lesser Flamingo house and is very attractive. There's about half a dozen of each species and it's "walk-in" rather than "walk-through".

There's a decent patch of unused land that you can see beyond the aviary and it did seem like they could have made it quite a bit bigger (and properly walk-through) without too much extra expense.
Click to expand...

Having seen the exhibit last weekend I'd guess that one reason for it not being any bigger would be that a larger roofed area would have been needed, which would have made it more expensive.

And I'm not sure that I see the need for it to be any more walk-through. You get a lot closer to the birds here than you would do at Minsmere!! :)
 
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