Woodland Park Zoo Blog

Posted by Joanna Klass, Woodland Park Zoo Animal Care Manager Editor's Note: In addition to being an Animal Care Manager at Woodland Park Zoo, Joanna serves as Vice Chair for the Association of Zoos and Aquariums' Anseriformes Taxon Advisory Group. She also volunteers with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, which heads up the research project she writes about here. Emperor geese at Woodland Park Zoo. Photo: Jeremy Dwyer-Lindgren/Woodland Park Zoo If anyone saw me walking through the airport last June, they would’ve thought ‘TSA is going to love her!’. The item in question was a portable incubator, which on the outside looks like a hard, black briefcase with wires and a temperature readout on the front. In other words, not your typical roller-bag luggage. So, why was I taking this unusual item through the TSA gauntlet? It had a very important place to be—the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta in southwestern Alaska. I was invited by Tasha DiMarzio, a waterfowl biologist for the Alaska D...

Posted by Gigi Allianic, Communications Photos by Jeremy Dwyer-Lindgren/Woodland Park Zoo Last week, we shared the poll results from a public naming of a Chilean flamingo chick at Woodland Park Zoo — Magdalena was the winner !  Read on for the rest of this "awww" inspiring story involving a resourceful Alaska Airlines Flight Attendant and a flamingo chick now called Sunny! The winning name, Magdalena, was chosen through an online poll of names representing national parks in Patagonia, a main region where Chilean flamingos live. The other choices in the naming poll were Torres, Lauca and Patagonia.  Magdalena was among six flamingo eggs from Zoo Atlanta that a Woodland Park Zoo animal keeper transported from Atlanta to Seattle via Alaska Airlines; however, the portable incubator protecting the eggs had stopped functioning. The eggs would have perished during the five-hour flight if not for the quick thinking by a flight attendant named Amber May.  Amber May meets the ...

Posted by Jim Watson, Wildlife Research Scientist, Washington Dept. of Fish and Wildlife Jim Watson is a friend of the zoo and works with our Living Northwest Conservation Program's Raptor Ecology of the Shrub-Steppe Project. Jim has partnered with us for years and we are excited to share his most recent adventures in raptor research: When Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife and the Woodland Park zoo started our cooperative raptor studies in the shrub-steppe of the Pacific Northwest 20 years ago we probably didn’t envision we were embarking on such a long-term journey. This productive relationship has delved into important projects including migration studies of ferruginous hawks and golden eagles, and how human activities like construction of wind turbines and lead contamination in prey are affecting these iconic raptors. We took advantage of a recent opportunity to look in a little different direction for our cooperative studies within the shrub-steppe raptor commu...