Adelaide Zoo has announced some egg-citing news!
They’ve welcomed a Tawny Frogmouth, Black-necked Stork, and six Swift Parrot baby chicks to their nest!
The Tawny Frogmouth and four of the Swift Parrot chicks have been cared for in the Adelaide Zoo bird nursery by their specialist keepers, with the little ones being almost fledged and soon to be released into their Swift Parrot Aviary.
The Tawny Frogmouth chick will be looked after in the Children’s Zoo nursery, and are able to be seen from today through the nursery window.
A naming competition will be held in the coming weeks for the latest addition to the Tawny Frogmouth family.
The Black-necked Stork chick can also be viewed by the public visiting the zoo, just opposite the Nocturnal House. He’s already been officially named ‘Karumba’, after the coastal town of the gulf of Carpentaria.
Senior Keeper of Birds and Free Flight, Chad Crittle, says the Tawny Frogmouth hatched three weeks ago and was a bit of a surprise for the team.
“We haven’t had a Tawny Frogmouth chick for years, this little one was a bit of a COVID baby,” Chad says.
“The mating pair have had 14 chicks between them, but over the last few years they haven’t had any”.
“We don’t know what changed, but we did add two young Tawny Frogmouth into the aviary and having a young male there might have stimulated breeding!”, he says.
For the critically-endangered Swift Parrot, the addition of six chicks is very exciting news.
“Mum did such a great job and raised four chicks by herself – Normally, they would only raise two,” Chad says.
Swift Parrot numbers have dwindled to somewhere between 1,000 and 2,500 mature birds in the wild, according to the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species.
The Action Plan for Australian Birds 2020, released last week, revealed that up to 216 Australian birds are now threatened – compared with 195 a decade ago.
In the report, the Swift Parrot was listed as one of the 23 critically endangered birds at risk of extinction, with land clearing and overgrazing noted to have significantly impacted numbers in the wild, as well as global warming.
The new chicks will take the flock numbers at Adelaide Zoo to 19, with Swift Parrots normally breeding in Tasmania and flying across the Bass Strait to forage on eucalypts on the mainland.
While numbers of Tawny Frogmouth’s remain stable, in recent years there has also been a significant overall decline in their number in the wild.
This latest addition to the Adelaide Zoo family is well welcomed, and a great attraction these school holidays!
Head to the Zoos SA website to book tickets to see these newest members of the Adelaide Zoo.
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