The Zoo's Bonus Bustards
by Howard Youth
On October 3, 1997, keepers celebrated a record-setting moment—the first hatching of a kori bustard at the Smithsonian's National Zoological Park. On that day, the Zoo became only the fifth in the world, and third in the United States, to breed this beefy bird. And it was no trouble at all. In fact, it was a delightful surprise.
Four years ago, three females and a male kori bustard lived in a grassy yard behind the Bird House. (Today, you can see four adult females, two adult males, and a juvenile male living there.) The keepers never saw the male perform his flamboyant puffball courtship display and assumed that the bustards would not mate. So when the female began incubating an egg in September 1997, the keepers guessed that she sat on a dud. But 20 days later, when the female briefly left the nest, keeper Sara Hallager peeked at the egg and saw it move. Keepers moved the egg to an indoor incubator, away from crows and other predators. Three days later, a fuzz ball the size of a barnyard chick broke out of the egg. Since that first nesting in 1997, 15 bustard chicks have hatched and grown at the Zoo.
The National Zoo and other institutions have joined in a formal Species Survival Plan that coordinates kori bustard zoo breeding. Hallager keeps the international studbook for koris, coordinating breeding records among 35 zoos. In March 2000, the Bird House received a bustard loaned from the Bronx Zoo/Wildlife Conservation Society's breeding facility on St. Catherine's Island, Georgia. Although the bird did not breed there, he changed his ways when he reached the Zoo. "Within three months he was siring chicks," says Hallager. "This was very exciting because it opens up the potential for moving non-breeders through breeding centers as one possible method of increasing genetic variation in the zoo population." With four successful years under its belt, the Zoo's bustard breeding effort provides inspiration for other zoos trying to save these magnificent birds.
ZooGoer 31(2) 2002. Copyright 2002 Friends of the National Zoo. All rights reserved.
