Hello Seren!
A very special little bird made an understated entrance this week.
You may have read about the bizarre transferral of one very special egg to Llanelli back in the summer... This egg contained the hopefully healthy embryo of a Lesser flamingo, and it desperately needed a mum. With the average age of the lesser flock exceeding 30+ you can easily imagine that very few of the pairs have much of an incentive to try to breed most years. In 2011 4 females made a nest, only 3 laid their own eggs (one choosing a nice round stone as a substitute.) Sadly the lack of dedicated protection achieved in the wild by safety in numbers is not possible in such an aging flock, so it seemed certain to staff here that a single chick would not be protected adequately. As a result, we set out to find the nearest breeding flamingo flock. A decision was quickly made to place the egg under an infertile bird at our Llanelli centre, and look what happened..!
Little Seren (star in Welsh) made the arduous trip back to the Slimbridge Lesser flock last week from our Llanelli centre. Having benefitted infinitely from the loving care and cresche of the Llanelli Caribbean flock, it became clear that Seren should return home. As winter aproached, the adults began to leave their young to their own devices, and being infinitely smaller than the other babes, Seren was beginning to look just a little vulnerable.
Nestled there in Richard's arms you can see that Seren really is diminutive. Whilst she still has bulk to put on, at this stage you would expect the bird to be fully grown as all the immature feathers are in place and the legs are fully black. Although noone can guarantee anything, she appears to me to be a little girl. The size of the feet and girth of legs in association with the head and beak size is much smaller than that of Hope, the male lesser that also hatched out to our great joy in 2008. You can but dream...
After a nervous few days, Seren settled wonderfully into the flock, and they took to her without a second thought. 
She loves being the only juvenile in the group; getting into the food bowl straight away and leisurely filtering her fill of food. I caught sight of her only this morning, comfortably roosting with them up on the grass in the sunshine. It looks like that for now at least, the punt has paid off!
