A pair of male griffon vultures at the Artis Amsterdam Royal Zoo who have been a couple since 2010 have decided to settle down and make some room in their nest and, more importantly, their hearts, and raise a chick of their own, according to CBS/AP.
In a statement, the zoo announced that keepers found an abandoned egg and let the bro-friends have at it. They took turns sitting on the egg till it hatched and now are feeding it by throwing up in its mouth—not because they are deviant gay sluts, mind you, but because that’s what birds do.
The zoo’s press release on the matter is in Dutch, but its Google translation suggests that “ARTIS is investigating the possibility of putting the two chicks out in the wild.” I don’t know where the other chick came from, but I’m sure the little one with two dads will do just fine, and in all likelihood be happier and healthier than its peers.
The adult males have, for the time being, put their yearly trips to Fire Island (as well as their frequent complaining on Facebook about other gay vultures who also frequent Fire Island) on hold to care for their newborn.
DISCUSSION
OK I’m going to take this baby bird story as an opportunity to share what just happened during my lunch break (I’m in Hawaii, so it’s 12:45):
My boyfriend and I were having lunch under a big tree on the university campus, and we saw two baby Japanese white-eye birds in the grass. These little sweeties:
We helped them across the sidewalk to the base of the big tree where we assumed they lived and probably fell out of recently (we’ve seen lots of their species living in this big tree). They started climbing the trunk (their species is big on climbing). One made it halfway to the first branch and then fell to the ground, the other made it halfway and then stopped there to rest.
At that point, another woman came over, asked what was happening, and introduced herself with “they call me the Bird Whisperer.” She said that she rescues baby birds and rehabilitates them, then releases them when they’re strong enough to return to the wild. She was concerned that the cats on campus would eat the babies before they could make it safely up the tree, even though the cats on campus usually only come out in the evening and are pretty well fed (long story short, the feral cats are spayed/neutered and fed cat food every evening). So she scooped the babies up to take them back to her office where she has a little bird rehab set up.
I think her heart was in the right place, but we were really surprised that she decided they needed saving after being there for all of 1 minute. Especially since the birds were making a good effort to get back in the tree, and we told her we had seen a parent checking in on them two or three times in the 5 minutes that we were helping the birds. But it got worse: After she left, and we continued to eat our lunch under the tree, we saw an adult white eye bird fly back to the tree, worm in its mouth, chirping, looking all around the tree trunk. It was definitely the parent bringing food for its babies. Making sure they were well fed. But the babies weren’t there. It just broke our hearts.
I really think that if you find a baby bird in the wild and it is not injured, and after observing for a bit you confirm that a parent definitely is still checking in on it, don’t take it. The poor things :(