The Bronx Zoo's Pink Pigeon Conservation Program | The Zoo

Pink pigeons are from the island of Mauritius, which is an island off the coast of Africa. There's one over here. Island species are vulnerable because they're surrounded by water. So if anything happens, whether it's habitat destruction or introduced predators, those populations don't have anywhere else to go to survive. These are actually two females. We have 10 pink pigeons in the collection currently, two males and eight females. So far, we've had 12 pink pigeon eggs this year, and none of them have hatched. It can be very frustrating to breed them, because you can put a male and a female together and give them everything they could possibly need, and then sometimes it still doesn't work out. You never know when they're just going to abandon the eggs completely. They are not the brightest birds at all. Even if we can get fertile eggs from them, there's no guarantee that they will actually incubate their eggs. Pink pigeons were on the brink of extinction. There were 16 birds in 1986, and now there's 400. The Bronx Zoo is part of the Pink Pigeon Conservation Management Program. We hope to hatch and raise enough birds to continue releasing them on Mauritius and keep that population healthy. The pink pigeons have an egg, so I'm going to check and see if it's viable. I'm going to give them a fake egg. This is a pink pigeon dummy. See, fake, won't break. To replace the real egg that's in there so that I can candle the egg. If it's fertile, I should be able to see some development. With pink pigeons, every single egg is precious. They will find a way to mess it all up, so we need to do everything we can to keep the odds in our favor. Nobody home. At this point of incubation, we should see some veins, and we should see an egg. We should see some veins, and we should see an embryo starting to develop, but the egg is clear, so it's infertile. It's disappointing. I was really hoping since they had gotten this far. They seem to be doing everything right except for one crucial thing. But we have lots of options, so we're not going to give up. We are headed to the pheasant aviary to pick up a male pink pigeon that's been over here cooling his jets because he was a little, I would say. He's on a pink pigeon timeout. Yes, pink pigeon timeout. That's a good way to put it. I call him the stud. Some people refer to him as Mr. Pink or a hotshot. Well, I refer to him as handsome. The thing about the stud is he's very amorous, but that quickly turned to aggression towards a female, and we want to make sure that no pink pigeons get harmed. So we put the stud and a little bit of pink pigeon timeout here over the summer in the pheasantry. He's coming out of timeout in hopes that he'll breed with the female that we've selected. So we're going to take him to meet his mate at the conservation building. Hi, handsome. He's already produced one chick last year, so we definitely know that he can produce viable offspring. So he's very important. When the stud enters an enclosure, he kind of owns the enclosure. He's really, you know, he's the alpha pink. The female that we're going to pair him with, she's also got a pretty strong personality. That is serendipity. She's not a pushover. She tends to stand up for herself. Hopefully, this will work out. Here you go. He's displacing her territorial behavior. Just because this is a good genetic match, that doesn't mean that necessarily it's going to work out. But we're going to keep tinkering, and this is part of tinkering. Do we have an egg transport box over here? I have a blue cup and some tissue paper. We should be fine. This morning, serendipity was sitting in the nest. I was able to take a look, and she has an egg in there. So we're going to pull and dummy the egg. Sue. It's broken? There might be another one in there. OK. So let's hope that there is a second egg, then. It's intact. Come on, buddy. Yes. Dummy egg. You have it? Sorry, dummy. So this is great. We have two, and this one's intact. And this is our best pair of birds, so this is very exciting. This is an egg from the stud and serendipity. He has produced fertile eggs in the past. So the potential for this to be fertile is good. This is going to be great. Let's not put all our eggs in one basket. It's going to be fine, either way. Deep breaths. OK, lights. OK, so I'm not seeing any signs of development. A lot of times, the first signs you'll see are small veins. You know, as much science as we have and as much as we know about the birds, there is a certain amount of luck involved in this. And it just appears that we're not having much luck. We're at a point where we have to end the breeding season for the pink pigeons and talk about next season. You just have to keep on keeping on. We don't have a squab, but I wouldn't say it's been a complete failure. We've learned a lot about what will work and what won't. And we have Thelma and Louise on exhibit. So come springtime, we can use them as a surrogate.