Flamingos find new homes in zoos across U.S.

HIALEAH, Fla. -- Darcy Henthorn can't wait to meet her little bundles of joy.

All 20 of them.

The Oklahoma City Zoo curator of birds recently claimed 20 flamingo eggs in Miami to exhibit in her zoo. The zoo is now one of more than a dozen wildlife parks across the county that have received the popular pink birds from a former South Florida race track.

The 300 flamingos that once flew over the Hialeah Park horse-racing track still live inside its 1 1/8-mile racing oval. The Miami Metrozoo now collects some of Hialeah's flamingo eggs and distributes them across the country.

This year the eggs are headed to the St. Louis Zoo, the Bronx Zoo, Birmingham Zoo and Oklahoma City. Hialeah flamingos now roost at several major cities, including Albuquerque, Tulsa and Sacramento, said Sherry Branch, an Association of Zoos and Aquariums committee member. The eggs add unrelated birds to the zoos' flocks so there isn't as much inbreeding, cutting down the genetic problems that causes.

Carl Burch, the Miami Metrozoo's zoological supervisor, said the donated eggs are valuable to zoos because they come from a captive flock that has a strong reproductive history. Burch said many zoos can collect more eggs from Hialeah than they can raise on their own.

"We have actually been on the waiting list for, gosh, I think about four years," said Michael Macek, curator of birds at the St. Louis Zoo.

The first flock of birds came to Hialeah Park in the 1920s from the Caribbean, said track superintendent Jesus Perdomo, but they soon flew back. Park officials gathered up a new flock in the 1930s, Perdomo said. Originally, adult flamingos were taken from Hialeah to other zoos until the egg collection program started in the mid-1980s.

"It's so much easier now to collect the eggs," Perdomo said.

Macek said his zoo hopes the Hialeah eggs will balance out its aging flamingo population.

"We really do need some fresh blood in our colony," Macek said. "It's really getting old."

During the exchange, the flamingo eggs don't exactly travel in style. The Oklahoma City Zoo stowed its eggs in a cooler under an airplane seat and St. Louis Zoo officials carried theirs aboard as well.

"It's important to be able to get unrelated animals," said Christine Sheppard, curator of birds at Bronx Zoo. "I would much rather transport a flamingo egg than an adult flamingo."