Flamingo!

The elegant American flamingo--immortalized in plastic the world over, little known and understood.


The Columbus Zoo's little colony of American (or Caribbean) flamingos bears evidence to their breeding success. It's dotted with dusky, particolored young birds.

Yaay! Breeding flamingos in Ohio seems like a little miracle to me, like growing some ridiculous orchid on my bedroom windowsill. But miracles can be done, given love and attention.

Captive flamingos won't breed unless there's a critical mass of birds. In the wild, breeding is irregular, and linked to water levels and rainfall. Flamingos the world over live in incredibly harsh environments, often on scorching alkaline lakes and pans where little else than the tiny crustaceans and shrimp they eat can survive. I have a searing memory of a National Geographic article from my childhood about people saving flamingo chicks from certain death by breaking off heavy anklets of soda that had formed on their legs. All these things fed into my desire to help birds...thanks, Dad, for faithfully subscribing to NG and feeding the flame (and filling the vast heavy boxes of past issues in the attic, which I revisited frequently).

Flamingos build a cool little volcano of mud, the only material at hand, to raise their single egg above the hot flat (and make it easier for the gangly birds to settle on the nest).

As an example of why you really can't trust the Internet for information, here's a bit from the Wikipedia writeup:

Like all flamingos, it lays a single chalky white egg on a mud mound, between May and August; incubation until hatching takes from 28 to 32 days; both parents brood the young for a period of up to 6 years when they reach sexual maturity. Their life expectancy of 40 years is one of the longest in birds.

Wow. Who knew that the adult flamingos sat on their chicks until they reach sexual maturity six years later? I sure didn't. Not sure what they mean by "brood," but in ornithoparlance, it means to sit on your young. Maybe they "brood over their young" until they reach sexual maturity. I certainly can get behind that.

Given that flamingos are able to feed themselves at two months of age, swinging their bent bills upside down and filtering crustaceans out of mud, being sat upon for six years seems excessive. Maybe everything you see in print ain't so. And about that life expectancy: Yes, flamingos can live 50 years in captivity, but wild life expectancy is not a lot past 25. Any bird that lays a single egg, whose reproductive success hinges on rainfall and water levels, had better live a long time in order to replace itself. And 25 years is a long time in the wild. With the Internet in general, and Wikipedia in particular, you get the information you pay for. Caveat emptor! Except, of course, on this blog. You can trust the Science Chimp. And if you catch her out, good for you. Leave a comment and she'll pant-hoot for a few minutes, fling things around, and then fix it.

Everything you read about flamingos states that their pink coloration derives from carotenoids in the shrimp and crustaceans they eat. In zoos, a simple food additive takes care of the problem. Avicultural nutrition has come a long way since my childhood, when zoo flamingos and spoonbills were whitish, and even the vivid scarlet ibis was a pallid salmon-pink. The Columbus flock is gloriously colorful, enhanced by the grayish youngsters that indicate its reproductive success.I love looking at the kinked vertebrae in those amazing necks.

There was a fair amount of posturing and honking going on when we visited. Male flamingos tower over females, reaching almost five feet in height. Yet that huge bird weighs in at around six pounds, all feathers and hollow bones. Yes, your sofa pillow of a kitty cat weighs more than a five-foot bull flamingo. Aren't birds the berries?


It's really a shame that most of us know flamingos only from captivity. Bill and I took a trip to the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico in 2005 that stands out in my mind as one of the last trips we took together just for its own sake. It wasn't a press trip; we both got to go together; our itinerary was our own, and we did it up right, driving from hotspot to hotspot, having some really singular experiences at Maya temples and coastal flats. We paid attention to the birds, the landscape, and to each other, nothing and no one else on the agenda. We ticked off endemic birds and ate tiny popcorn shrimp in heavenly ceviche right out from under the flamingos at Celestun. I wish we could travel like that again someday.

Shooting with a tiny pocket Olympus camera, I got these images:What a flight profile, like a flying pool cue.

And we waited for the flamingos to come into their roost at sunset, and it was absolutely unbelievable to see these crazy icons of the tropics alive and flapping and honking right overhead.

With the 300 mm. telephoto I've got now, I doubtless could have had some frame-filling shots. I'm thankful to be able to go to Columbus and see flamingos, but I'll never forget seeing them where they really belong.

Whenever you can, try to see birds and animals where they really belong. Seeing them where they don't belong is lovely, but seeing them free and open and wild changes your life.

Elephants, Sublime and Ridiculous

Any zoo loves having baby animals to draw in visitors. The Columbus Zoo boasts Beco, child of mother Phoebe, 22, and father Coco, 38, Asian elephants in their collection. Phoebe's captive-born, while Coco was taken from the wild in Thailand in 1971. Imagine what his life has been like since. He's lucky to have ended up here.

Phoebe was pregnant with Beco for 655 days. Oh, my. 270 days was plenty enough for me. Imagine being pregnant for almost two years! With a baby elephant! He was born on March 27, 2009. So he's about 8 months old in these photos.

But there's more. Phoebe's pair of lovely and anthropomorphically-placed breasts (yes, you're seeing elephant cleavage!) produce three gallons of milk each day. Ye gods. She'll nurse Beco for two years. That, at least, is in line with expectations for humans...

I will never forget my encounters with wild African elephants in Kruger National Park in South Africa. The first I ever saw was a huge bull in musth (rutting condition) which charged our mini van (which at that moment felt entirely too mini) while one of our party was snapping photos. "I must move the van! He's coming on!" our guide Peter Lawson warned. "Wait! Wait! I need this shot!" shouted the photographer in our group (That was before my own incurable lensmania came on). Peter waited until the last moment to stomp the petrol and send our van shooting out of harm's way. Yiiiikes. Waay too close for comfort. We were all mad at the photographer, even as I now have come to understand that particular mania for the perfect shot.

Well, you seldom get the perfect shot, but you try and try.


But the very best moment I had with a wild African elephant came one night when I heard a cracking sound outside the little hut where I had been sleeping. It was a dark, moonless night and black as the inside of a cow. I stepped out on the tiny front porch of the straw-thatched hut and saw nothing, though I heard something very large breathing and sighing and rocking very close by. I strained my eyes, leaning forward into the blackness. And very gradually became aware that the reason I could see nothing but black was that my entire field of view was taken up by the bulk of an elephant which was eating a small tree planted inches from my porch. I was literally two feet from its face. One swing of its trunk could have sent me flying into next Sunday. Its huge and gentle eye materialized before me, fringed by long lashes.

I looked directly into that fist-sized eye and the elephant blinked languidly, like a whale might, acknowledging me without fanfare. I made out the rest of it by starlight and stood perfectly still, smelling its rich manurey aroma, as it finished demolishing the newly-planted tree, then walked soundlessly into the center of the compound to drink from a fountain: slurrrrppp, pattersplash, suuuuck, ahhhhhhhhhhhgggg. A deep elephant sigh of satiety. I felt blessed beyond all measure and comprehension to have been so close, to have been acknowledged, left unharmed and trembling with delight in my thin white nightshirt.

Speaking of delight...I am great fun at a zoo if you want a barrage of encyclopedic information and appreciative gusto right at hand. I am a terrible person with whom to go to the zoo if you're prudish or easily embarrassed. I revert right back to about age 4, consumed with curiosity and unabashedly enthusiastic about seeing my first pile of red panda poop or the bits of animals that get Photoshopped out of many magazine photos. So kids love to go to the zoo with me; some adults, not so much. Oh well. There's no keeping a good Science Chimp down.

After getting his little foots wet, Beco had an urge.

and Zick cranked up the 300 mm. telephoto for the perfect shot. Ahhhh. The pause that refreshes.

Hey Beco, if it's nice out, leave it out.

Duuude. You are too cute for words.

Tiger, Burning Bright

Hangin' in there, in our endless winter idyll in snowbound Whipple. Everyone else is well now. I plan to cough for oh, another week, then abruptly stop this tiresome pursuit of stuffing all my pockets with Puffs against the time when I will need to gag up another particolored bit of lung. Remains to be seen whether the kids will go back to school on Monday. Why break tradition?

Illness aside, we have had a wonderful time with our big bunch of friends, watching movies and hurtling down the snowy cowpasture abyss on plastic sleds. We've tested ten different sled types and the $6.00 neon-green plastic toboggan from K-mart wins over the saucers and inflatables and even the $120 fancy foam one with the Gore-tex handles. We could do a Consumer Reports on toboggans. We have found that spraying the undersides with cooking oil makes for a lot more screaming. And we've all gotten good at bailing before we hit the bobwire at the bottom of the Bowl. Bbbbbb. But enough about us and how we have passed our schoolless days. On to Siberia!


Surely one of the most beautiful animals on earth is the tiger. On this crisp winter day, the Columbus Zoo's endangered Amur tiger (also known as the Siberian tiger) was feeling frisky. It seemed that the weather suited him fine. I would imagine that Amur tigers are not huge fans of our close, humid Ohio summers. Native to far eastern Russia, Amur tigers are no strangers to cold.

It has always seemed odd to me that such a colorful, exotic-looking cat should live in snowy, wintry climes amidst pine, oak and spruce; prey on red deer, elk, moose and wild boar, but they do. This is a cold-adapted animal. The Amur is the largest tiger, and thus the largest felid, in the world. Still, you'd think they'd evolve away from that gaudy orange coat, turn industrial gray or something, to live in Siberia. Just another thing to be thankful for.

I pictured myself standing before a ledge that was above my head, arms stretched out. Could I leap to the top? Could I do anything but look around for help? Nope. Enh. Enh.

Imagine the power it takes to hoist 380 pounds to above head height from a standing start.

Not a problem for this spring-loaded beast.

He padded around his rocky enclosure, seemingly looking for something.

We drank in his beauty

and delighted to see him flop down right below us.

Who scrawled such patterns on his cheeks, dipping the brush in ink, flattening it, pulling up for a thin line, dropping a dot?

Who decided where the dits and dashes go?

What hand, what eye made this perfect animal?

The best human efforts, a crude imitation of his elegance.


Zoos are the keepers of rare animals, rare genes. We need them for so many reasons. With perhaps 500 Amur tigers surviving in Siberia, each one is as precious as a Faberge egg.

There are 421 Amur tigers in captivity.

The genetic diversity of wild Amur tigers has been so reduced by their dwindling numbers that the captive population actually has greater genetic diversity than does the wild group. In fact, the Amur tiger's genetic diversity is so low that it has an effective wild population of only 35. (This is a slightly complex concept; I encourage you to read more at this link). Selective breeding for rare genotypes is ongoing in captive situations, with the possibility of introducing animals with these genes back into wild populations in the future. Man has hunted and poached the Amur tiger almost out of existence, feeding the sick and indefensible animal-parts trade in the Far East. And zoos hold the key to the Amur tiger's genetic health going forward. It's us, destroying; us, rebuilding.

Still hate zoos? Think again.

Tiger, tiger, still, somehow, burning bright.

We're Goin' to the Zoo!

We went to the Columbus zoo on a winter Saturday in celebration of Liam's tenth birthday.

Phoebe and Liam, with dear friends Kelly and Anna, fell into line behind a little girl who was carefully stepping along a raised curb, as little girls will.

She was so intent on her balance that she didn't know she had an entourage.

When she discovered that she'd been leading the way for our party, she was delighted.

And just a wee bit smug.

As an Ohioan since 1992, I am proud to say that our Columbus Zoo kicks zoological park derriere. It is a wonderful place, staffed by people who really understand and dig the animals. It's beautiful and spacious and anything but antiquated. You might think I'd be the kind of person who declares, "I hate zoos." You hear people say that, but not me. I suspect that folks who feel that way haven't set foot in a zoo since they were small. Those people need to visit the Columbus Zoo. So much has changed for the better, for the animals and for the people who look at and care for them. And the Columbus Zoo does a stellar job of highlighting the vital role of zoos in endangered species stewardship.

Where else can you see Fluffy, probably the fattest python in the world?

Fluffy's coils look like Spin-Art.


Where else can you get eye-to-eye with some fabulous flying foxes, which look something like winged Pomeranians?


Stretching a wing, showing a band on his odd hooked forefinger. What a miracle bats are. A collection of bones and skin, formed into something wondrous, something DaVinci might have invented if it did not already exist. The blood vessels, supplying all that membrane with life. The membrane, stretched between fingers of a huge bony hand. All of it, bearing the animal aloft in the only true mammalian flight.


From wing to blanket. They fuss and vibrate and scratch and preen, rarely still, looking like a bunch of itchy umbrellas hung from the ceiling.

Lighting wasn't fabulous in the monkey house, but I caught a baby golden langur in flight.


He pushed pretty much all of our buttons at once.

Barely the size of a squirrel, he clung with authority to the narrow limbs, a 20' fall awaiting if he slipped. He didn't slip. Still, it was hard for Liam's mama to watch him cavort so high above cruel cement.

Give me a tail, willya, huh?


Adorable, that's all.

So. How's the twice a week thing treating you? I like it. But I spend four times as much time on each post. Oops. Still wobbling a bit in the new orbit, I guess. There are paintings coming out of it, however, which is the whole point.

By Monday, January 11, the kids will have had one day of school in the last 19. We will have enjoyed a peaceful Christmas, a wildly fun New Year's onset, and lengthy visits from acute viral pharyngitis and pinkeye, the guests who wouldn't leave. Hackahackahacka. We will have taken the sleds down the Bowl many times, and the Wii, which is worth its weight in gold, will have had an obscene amount of use. So far, we still have heat and power and I have not had to cook everything in the freezer at once, and for that I am abjectly grateful. As country denizens, we tend to associate this extreme cold and prolonged snow cover with the loss of electricity, heat, or both.

But the snow is light and fluffy and the winds are calm; no branches breaking, no powerlines snapping; and other than Liam's losing his glasses on a sled run, and our finding out that metal detectors can't find titanium frames, no matter how dear, it's been a pretty good run. We hope the same for you.

You Can't Have All the Things You Love

On our walk down Dean's Fork, our wandering horse friends come out to meet us, ignoring their shorted-out electric fencing. They have the run of the road, as the random piles of horsebockie attest.

Another pretty pair. The mare's a nice Appaloosa. Some people say they're not the sharpest knives in the drawer, but she seems both wise and kind.

What's lovelier than a young girl and a horse, talking?




If it weren't for the vet and food and shoeing and housing and fencing costs; if it weren't for the possibility of busted kid limbs and heads, heck, I'd have a couple of horses around. I love 'em. More than that, I love to love other people's horses. Having once been part-owner of a boat, I'd put hosses and boats in the same category. Sure, I'd love a ride on yours, thank you! And then when the engine (pastern, hoof, fence, barn) breaks down, you can be the one to fix it...


I could never understand why my dad wouldn't get me that horse I was dying to have. And now I do, oh how I do. It's one of those things that you can't grasp until you're in your parents' shoes, like wondering why your mom hated to see 14-year-old you take off alone on a 20-mile ride through the Virginia countryside on your ten-speed. What's the problem? you wondered. Why is she being so stern and worried? I'm FINE. Speedy! Alert! Immortal!

Dad, can I have a horse?

Farther on down the road, Jake found a stop sign, stolen from somewhere, lying in the ditch. All his switchboard lights lit up. He wanted it for his room.



Here they came down the road, carrying the dreadfully heavy sign. Click click click, aggh what a shot!

Liam's helping.
In the end we decided it was too heavy to carry the next mile. Whew. Not to mention that it's punishable by law to have a stop sign, even a found one, in your bedroom...

Back to the stream and the woods.


The Dean's Fork redtail circled, throwing spears down at us


and Cooper smiled in the sun.

Happy birthday, Shila, BFF, appreciator of all good things, fellow child trying to get in touch with her inner adult! What will the new year hold for you? Walks down Dean's Fork: a lock.