Thousands of flamingos start flying the nest in İzmir ‘paradise’

İZMİR

Autumn might seem a long way’s off amid the searing temperatures around Turkey, but for the thousands of young flamingos who call the Aegean province of İzmir home, time to move away and flap their wings towards a new life draws ever nearer.

More than 18,000 flamingos that hatched from their eggs two months ago in İzmir Bird Paradise, which has one of the world’s leading artificial breeding islands, are preparing to fly away.

Spending nearly two months with their families, the fledgling flamingos learn to fly and live alone in nature starting from the third month. The little birds that wander in the water and slowly feed themselves are training to fly by opening wings against the wind as well.

The baby flamingos with black and smoked feathers are closely followed by the Nature Protection teams and are fed with a kind of arthropod “artemia salina,” also known as salt shrimp.

Despite the modern world’s encroachment on the natural habitat of animals, the numbers of flamingos born each year has largely grown in the paradise.