The Black-necked Swan from the Pampas and Places of Penguins (PART II)

Abstract

When I arrived in Fort Worth in early December, 1991, the female of the 1985 pair was displaying an interest in the pile of hay placed by the side of their pool, and on December 17, laid her first egg. The second was noted December 21, and the third the day after. On Christmas Eve, Keeper I, Lisa Weedn, discovered egg number four, and the fifth was found the day after Christmas. Lisa began to have some concern by the 28th, when the 6th egg was discovered, and was, in fact, relieved when nothing followed the seventh egg laid December 30, 1991. Our Keeper III, Rick Tucker, recently arrived from Oklahoma City Zoo, had in the meantime, braved parental wrath, and pencilled a number on each egg as it appeared. As January came and went, the female steadfastly sat, through sleet and snow and rain, and a night when the temperature fell to 17°F. The little pool this pair occupied is right next to the Zoo's main cafe, so they were the subject of constant scrutiny and comment from our staff at coffee breaks and lunch, not only bird
people, but Mammals, Herps, and Concessions as well. Although I was appointed
Keeper II, to manage the finches and softbills in the ''World of Primates" (which opened April 4), and the associated off-exhibit breeding facility, in January, the wonderful collection of  African finches had not yet arrived (and would then spend a month in quarantine), and no birds were yet released in the monumental new ape house. Thus, my first several weeks at Fort Worth Zoo were spent learning the other sections in the bird department. Late January found me doing ''Birds of Prey'', which included not only the forty-year old Harpy Eagle and her mate, the King Vultures, the Andean Condors, and the testy Bald Eagles, but 46 Roseate Spoonbills, the world's largest captive flock (housed with herons, ibises, storks and gulls, in smelly winter quarters in the Indian One-horned Rhinoceros Barn), the Laughing Gulls, Night Herons, Silver Pheasants, and assorted ducks then occupying the spoonbill's summer aviary, and the flock of 27 Chilean Flamingos (whose...