Celebrating National Zookeeper Week: Do You Flamingo? We Do!

It's no secret that we love animals: big and small, cute and cuddly, creepy and crawly - we love them all. But it is all the work that goes on behind the scenes - the efforts to maintain the Accreditations and Recognitions and the Zookeepers who help care for our residents that help to provide positive experiences that last a life time. It is why we look forward to celebrating National Zookeeper Week. 

What is National Zookeeper Week?

The third week in July has been set aside as a time to highlight the role animal care professionals play as educators and conservation ambassadors. This is an essential role and responsibility of the Zookeeper as the need to protect and preserve wildlife and their habitats increase. 

Zoo and Aquarium professionals care for hundreds of species three hundred and sixty five days a year, twenty four hours a day, seven days a week - from hurricanes to blizzards and heat waves, Zookeepers must be ready for everything. A keeper's day can include many tasks including cleaning, food prep, medical treatment, training, enrichment, landscaping, exhibit design, public outreach and education and much more. For these animal care professionals it is much more then a job, it's a passion and a calling. 

This week we will be featuring our zookeepers and their favorite animals in a daily posting here on our blog. We are going to kick off the celebration highlighting one of our newest exhibits: the flamingos, we hope you will come back every day this week to see a new picture of the zookeepers imitating their animals! 

The flamingos pink or reddish color comes from the rich sources of carotenoid pigments in the algae and small crustaceans the birds eat. The long legs of flamingos let them wade in to deeper water then most other birds to look for food. Flamingos are unique that their bill is held upside down in the water. They eat by sucking water and mud in the front of the bill and then pumping it out again at the sides. Here, briny plates called lamellae act like little filters, trapping shrimp and other good food the flamingos like to eat.

Flamingos lay one large white egg in a mud nest built by both parents. After a chick is hatched, the chick will stay on the nest for 5-12 days. During this time, the chick is fed a type of “milk” called crop milk that comes from the parents upper digestive tract. Both males and females can feed the chick this way, Even flamingos that are not the parents can act as foster-feeders. 

It is believed that the begging calls the hungry chick makes stimulate the secretion of the milk. While feeding a chick, the parents lose their bright pink colors turning themselves to pale pink or white. The parents will gain their color back once the chicks begin eating on their own.

What's New at the Zoo!

Everyone at the park is understandably over the moon about our new arrivals. We hope you'll plan a trip to Minocqua to visit. See you soon!

A recent photo of our black leopard Teeah. You can see how big she has gotten since she was first introduced a few short weeks ago. Teeah is very inquisitive and loves to explore her surroundings.

The goats are one of our park's more popular residents. Here is a photo of a mother goat with her babies. Children of all ages love to get up close and personal with the goats.

Aren't they adorable? These two Canadian Lynx kittens are just too cute for words. The Canada Lynx is found in northern forests across almost all of Canada and Alaska. It is a threatened species in the contiguous United States. The adult Canada Lynx has a dense fur that is silvery brown but in summer becomes a reddish brown color. It has a short tail with a black tip and has long furry tufts on its ears. Its long legs with broad furred feet help the lynx to travel through the deep snow.

These beautiful birds are Ring-Necked Doves, otherwise known as Cape Turtle Dove that can be found living in the Savannah's, farmlands and woodlands of southern and eastern Africa. Their name comes from a black patch of feathers on the back of their necks. The rest of their feathers are a beautiful pale brownish-grey, with darker colors on their backs. They also have white tips on the end of their tail feathers. Doves usually lay two eggs which incubate in about 15-days. The males sit on the eggs during the day, and the female at night. Ring-Necked Doves rest in the treetops during the night; they feed mainly on seeds but they will also eat insects.

Parakeet Budgie Encounter: Wildwood's Newest Attraction Is A Hit With Our Guests! Opens May 30th

These cute and popular birds are instantly recognizable as parakeets or budgies. Their formal name is the Budgerigar or Shell Parakeet. Whatever you call them, we know them as one of the park's many popular residents.

These small, long-tailed parrots are seed eaters. Wild parakeets are found living throughout the drier parts of Australia and are noticeably smaller than those found in captivity. Naturally green and yellow with black, scalloped markings on the nape, back and wings, breeders have created a rainbow of blues, whites, violets and yellows, grays and even some with small crests. Budgies are popular pets around the world due to their small size, playful nature and their ability to learn to whistle tunes, mimic human speech and learn to do tricks.

Budgies are closely related to the lories and fig parrots but here in America, we call them parakeets; a term that refers to any number of small parrots with long, flat tails.

Budgies are intelligent and very social animals; they enjoy playing with toys and interacting with humans as well as other parakeets.

It is usually easy to tell the difference between a male and a female budgie that is over six months old, mainly by the color of the area containing the nostrils called the cere. Behavior and head shape will also help you tell the difference.

A mature males' cere is usually light to dark blue but can be purplish to pink in some birds. Males generally have a rounder head and are very vocal.

Females' ceres are pink as immature birds; becoming beige to white when they are not in the breeding season, brown during mating season. Typically female parakeets have a flattened back of the head, right above the region of the nape.

You won't want to miss our newest popular attraction, The  Parakeet Budgie Encounter, a walk-through aviary where you can experience up close and personal, the beauty of over 500 parakeets. You can buy a “bird feed stick” for $1 and have parakeets eating right out of your hand.

Visitors agree, the Parakeet Budgie Encounter is one of their new favorite experiences at the zoo!