In the pink
AT Coton Manor in Northamptonshire, a tall box is being carefully opened. Inside is an unusual cargo—four young pairs of greater flamingos to continue Coton’s tradition.
Their ruffled plumes are shades of a frost-kissed magnolia’s petals. These are juvenile birds, so they aren’t fully in the pink yet, but they reveal their deep-rose underwings as a promise of what is to come as they flap, thrillingly, across to the trio of elderly birds sporting their fully pink mature costume.
The garden is filled with a chorus of excited fluted honking, but, despite sounding like geese, flamingos are, in fact, closely related to grebes. The newcomers stretch out their necks and croquet malletlike beaks to nudge one another in a decorous greeting. With flamingos, it’s all about company, so these new arrivals are welcomed into the ranks.
Coton is the only garden in the country where you can walk among free-ranging flamingos (‘A colour symphony’, April 13). The reason they are here at all is as a result of the friendship between Coton’s previous owner, Henry Pasleytyler, and Sir Peter Scott, the founder of the Wildfowl & Wetlands Trust. Sir Peter gave several flamingos to Coton in 1971 knowing they would be well cared for by his friend, who was as much of an avianist as he was a gardener. To this day, there remains an element of Alice in Wonderland gorgeousness at Coton, a perfect balance of feather and flora where the birds, free from cages or netting, blend into the flowers. It’s an elegance few zoos can achieve.
Susie Pasley-tyler, the current custodian of Coton, together with her husband, Ian, says the flamingos are a constant source of wonder. Seeing them standing stock still, improbably perched on one of their tall, thin legs, many visitors assume they are sculptures. Most confident with the crowds are the two fuchsiaorange Caribbean flamingos, who court the cameras constantly.
My own interest in the Coton flock stems from the fact that I nearly became a zookeeper, having had to choose between doing an internship at Cotswold Wildlife Park and training at Kew Gardens. I’m keen to do a design for a flamingo enclosure: I envisage slicks of water between archipelagos of soft, sandy islands with a shelterbelt of Cornus ‘Midwinter Fire’ that will make the flamingos look as if they are phoenixes. The Ancient Egyptians, seeing flocks from afar in their native shallow, soda lakes believed them to be omens of the sun god Ra.
Perhaps the most famous flamingo haunt was the Kensington roof gardens in London. When it closed in 2018, Bill, Ben, Splosh and Pecks found themselves happily rehoused at Pensthorpe, a wildfowl collection in Norfolk.
Norfolk seems to have been a stronghold for exotic avian fanciers. My friend Roger Cattermole of Norfolk Wildfowl has dedicated his life to pygmy geese and all manner of soft bills that look as if they are fashioned from the finest silks. Roger doesn’t keep flamingos himself, but he directed me to a private breeding flock, from where Coton’s latest captive bred birds have landed.
A well-cared-for flamingo can easily live for more than 50 years. At Coton, they occasionally make their miniature volcano-like nests within the flowerbeds, but, so far, no eggs have ever been laid. Their domestic diet resembles soaked biscuits and is packed with essential carotenoids and shrimp meal to ensure pink feathers.
Flamingos are surprisingly robust, but they require a soft flooring to prevent bumblefoot, a painful bacterial infection. What look like their knees are in fact their ankles—hence their incredible zig-zag walk. They can be very nervous and need company of their own kind to feel secure. In the past, mink have been a problem at Coton, but an electrified fence is a constant defence now.
Ice allowed a fox to kill The Queen’s flamingos in the gardens of Buckingham Palace in 1996. They had been a gift from London Zoo, which presented a dozen of them to the young Queen in 1959. It was noted in the press release that, each day, the birds dined on Dutch shrimp and cockles.
Looking at the flock at Coton, they could almost be stems of peonies, some tight in bud; others stirring into an awakening of petals. Their calm reflections in the dark water are complemented by a flotilla of apricot whistling ducks and the call of moorhens from within the overhanging rhododendron. With these newcomers, Coton will hopefully be in the pink for many decades.
Flamingos can be nervous and need company
The Flower Yard by Arthur Parkinson is out now
Next week Chelsea