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four month old flamingo, who went missing earlier this month Discovered now living in a wildlife park in Cornwall France,
Frankie the flamingo, who was born in July, went missing from a walled garden at Hayley’s Paradise Park, near St Ives, on the morning of Sunday 2 November, despite having a feather clipped on one of his wings.
After more than a week of worry for his keepers, photographs taken in Trefles, Brittany, show that Frankie has flown south, reaching northern France.
Paradise Park Director Nick Reynolds said Independent: “We saw her at 7.30 in the morning. Then at 8.30 in the morning I got a call saying ‘we can’t find the flamingo’, and I came back to the park to find she wasn’t there and we had no idea where she was.”
“We were pretty sure she would fly, there really was no other scenario that could have happened. She was inside our walled garden, which had a 12-foot wall and an aviary built in front of it. So she flew over it on her own, which is quite amazing.”
Mr Reynolds said that rather than pinning birds on the park’s wings, meaning they are permanently unable to fly, the feathers are clipped, but in this case Frankie’s mature feathers grew faster than anticipated.
“We just clip feathers. You clip a feather, and then obviously [for young birds] Feathers fall off naturally and new feathers grow. When they start to grow back, they are in ‘blood quill’, so there is blood in their quills to grow feathers, so you have to be careful – you can’t cut them too early, or you will cut the blood quill.
“So she’s grown them out, and got a little lift, and then she’s out because of the little trouble we had with her last week.”
After escaping the park, he is seen several times flying.
“We’ve seen him a number of times locally,” Mr Reynolds said. “Then some photos came out and they showed flamingos in France. We’ve got some new ones that have come in just now that are fantastic and we can definitely see the feather that we clipped off, so we can definitely 100 percent identify it as Frankie.”
Despite being “devastated” by her departure, Mr Reynolds said it seemed likely she would not return until she decided to go home herself.
“The logistics of getting him back here would just be a non-starter,” he said. “First of all you have to capture him in France. Secondly, we have to allow France to take him to a quarantine facility and quarantine him for 30 days. Then you have to get export permits and import permits, health certificates, quarantine him [in the UK] For 30 days and then when she came back to the park, after the outdoor quarantine, here’s another 30 days of quarantine.
“He is now classified as a wild bird, and with the bird flu situation at the moment, would the French allow all this? We don’t think they would. If there was a chance we could do it, then yes, we would try.
“It would be easier if she went back to England,” he said, adding that the chances of that happening “are slim, because she’s going south, doing what she would have done naturally.”
“I’m personally upset and our entire team is upset by this. We’re not abandoning him and we’re still asking for photos so we can see what’s going on.”