One more year and after a few weeks of incubation, Bioparc Fuengirola has welcomed the first flamingo babies from the laying that took place a few weeks ago. The park's Zoology team expects there to be around a dozen births. If so, with these the park would have a colony of about seventy flamingos, including roses and dwarfs, the two species that the Malaga conservation center houses.

People who visit Bioparc Fuengirola during these next few weeks will be able to identify these small grayish down chicks among the feathers of their parents or exploring the beach with the rest of the adult flamingos that live in the park.

Year after year, the incubation of these eggs is possible thanks to the work of the team of caretakers, who, after identifying the courtships between flamingos, work daily to condition the floor of the facility. Through these tasks that they carry out morning after morning, they prepare the beach to transform it into a kind of brackish water quagmire. A space that allows these birds to have mud and clay to build their high nests.

Throughout the incubation period, their caregivers respect their natural process. These maintain the appropriate humidity and salinity levels for the eggs to survive and the cleaning of the facility is minimized so as not to create stress in the flamingo colony.

A hatching that requires great effort on the part of the chicks

The hatching process of little flamingos can take up to forty-eight hours. They begin by chipping the egg shell little by little until it breaks. A great effort that causes exhaustion of the chicks. This weakness quickly leads them to consume what is known as 'yolk' that they find in their eggs, later with a first feeding that their parents guarantee them with a hyperprotein substance commonly called "crop milk." “This is an intense red color due to the high amount of carotenes, very similar to the color of blood. Such is the similarity that sometimes even if the chick slips out of the side of its beak while the parents are feeding it, it can be frightening. It may seem like it is injured, but no, it is this substance we call crop milk,” explains Javier Vicent, member of the Zoology team at Bioparc Fuengirola.

For now, the chicks will stay in the nest for three to four days, in some cases even a week. When the time comes to leave it, they begin an exploration route through the flamingo colony and can be observed forming small nurseries watched by the adults. A true wonder of nature.