Here at Flamingo Land we have creatures that are all shapes and sizes. One of our more scary and hairy residents is our Chilean Rose Tarantula with the lovely name – Tallulah. She is around 15 years old and has been with us for almost her entire life and can live up to 20 years!
We have been celebrating the birthday of our oldest Hamadrayas Baboon! Enrique turned 40 on the 14th of August here at Flamingo Land. He received a lovely birthday cake that consisted of strawberry jelly, pellets, apples, bananas and orange. In the wild the oldest Hamadrayas Baboon on record lived up to 27 so with Enrique reaching his 40s is a great achievement! Our Baboon diet is mainly vegetables, pellets, nuts and seeds. Fruit is a rare reward as the fruits in this country have a lot of sugar in so we don’t want our Baboons to have rotten teeth, but how often do you reach such a milestone!?
Our Nature Explorers activities are now in full swing and this week we have hosted a range of activities including bird walks, bug hunts, pond dipping, moth trapping and bird feeder making. But one of the most ambitious events was the making of a giant piece of art work from basically anything that could be found lying around.
First came Valentine the Lorikeet chick followed by Penguin chicks, Baboon infants, Kangaroo Joeys, a Red Panda cub and a quartet of Oryx calves, but when last month we celebrated the birth of an adorable zebra foal, it was always going to be a tall order to top. However, Flamingo Land now has a new arrival that is stealing the show within the cuteness stakes – A gorgeous Giraffe calf born to mum Lizzie and dad George.
On the 29th of July we will be celebrating International Tiger Day! Here at Flamingo Land we are very lucky to have a family of 3 critically endangered Sumatran Tigers. We have a 9 year old male called Bawa, a 9 year old female called Surya and lastly their 10 month old female cub called Menya!
Kumali the leader of our pride of African Lions here at Flamingo Land turned 16 on Tuesday the 10th of July! You may also recognise he also has a roller coaster here at the park named after him too. Here is of three of our eight lions celebrating with a beef feast.
Flamingo Land is celebrating the birth of a zebra foal! The new arrival, a male, was born on 26th June at 1am to parents Guinness and Vendela.
On Monday night, 18 million viewers tuned into their television sets to watch England take on Tunisia in their World Cup opener. For 90 minutes, the country of Tunisia was at the forefront of our minds, but by now it has probably already drifted off somewhere into our subconscious only to spring to mind next time we try to book a holiday.
It has been a double birthday for our cute and popular red pandas here at the zoo this week. Tai Jang our female turned 6 on the 12th of June whilst our male Bai Jiao also became 6 on the 14th of June! They received their favourite ‘panda cake’ which consists of a variety of nutrients including protein, essential vitamins, minerals and high fibre. However bamboo, fruits, pellets and other leaves make up a majority of their diet. Their cake this year was in the shape of a red panda.
Friday the 8th of June was World Ocean Day, an arbitrary date chosen to remind us of the importance of these vast, unexplored bodies of water. The world’s oceans cover around 71% of the earth’s surface and scientists believe that they are home to over a millions species of plant and animals, many of which are still waiting to be discovered. However, it is likely that some may never be found. One thing that scientists can agree on is that the number of species is getting smaller. Many are becoming extinct!
Fancy being a nature detective over the summer? Head on down to Flamingo Land Resort where you can take the steps to become a fully fledged nature explorer! This week we are are launching our Nature Explorer Passports. These are available from the education centre, reception and most onsite shops. The passports are being launched as part of ‘Love Your Zoo Week’. This annual event is coordinated by the British and Irish Association of Zoos and Aquaria (BIAZA) and encourages UK zoos to carry out events and activities to showcase the fantastic work they do.
There is absolutely no doubt that the big story of week was the Royal wedding. Harry and Meghan pledged their love for each other in front of a worldwide audience of millions and now that the vows have been spoken and the parties are over, attention will focus on the honeymoon and the will they, won’t they have children…
Here at flamingo land the animals have really been feeling the heat, for some species they absolutely love it but for others we have done our best to make sure they stay nice and cool. For many animals, ice lollies have been on the menu for this extremely hot bank holiday weekend.
We would like to introduce you to Murphy our 1 year old sea lion that has recently arrived from Belfast zoo in February. He joins our bachelor group which includes our big dominant male Clive as well as Merlin, Marvin and Miguel. Murphy is still getting used to his new surrounding but has been introduced to the rest of the group, over the past few weeks. He can be seen occasionally after shows and in the pool but he is just a bit too young to take centre stage just yet!
Flamingo Land is celebrating our adult Mongoose Lemurs’ Birthdays. Geoffrey and Geraldine share the same birthday on April 10th and are both 19 years old. Geoffrey was born at Parc Zoologique et Botanique, Mulhouse, France and Geraldine was born at Banham Zoo, Norfolk, UK. The pair were first introduced to each other at Colchester Zoo in 2000. The young pair then moved to Edinburgh Zoo together in 2009 and joined us at Flamingo Land in 2014.
We would like to introduce to you Flamingo Land’s very own hand reared Flamingo Chick! He hatched on the 31st of October and is now 6 months old and has already started to develop his first pink feathers. Flamingo chicks start life almost white in colour before developing grey feathers and eventually becoming completely pink!
On Saturday we started our summer season, this means that the park is now open later and that we have even more activities for you to enjoy. We have moved our talk times around to help visitors see even more animals and attend more events.
Captive breeding is one of the zoos most important roles and is necessary in order to increase species numbers. Zoos across the world work together to co-ordinate their efforts and many species are part of European endangered species breeding programmes.
At Flamingo Land we have two groups of meerkats. Our largest group is found in Children’s Planet and it is made up of six individuals so they have lots of social interactions between the members of their group. The other group is by baboon island where we have an older group consisting of two females and a male.
