Wichita

Zoo loses track of flamingos again

The hunt continues for a pair of flamingos that flew the coop more than a week ago from the Sedgwick County Zoo.

Zookeepers spotted the two birds in a nearby waterway two days after they escaped from their zoo enclosure June 27. But this weekend’s storms apparently scared them off, and they were gone again on Sunday, officials said.

Zoo spokesman Christian Baumer said the keepers are willing to wait – for a while.

“We’re getting hopeful they might return on their own,” he said. “But we aren’t abandoning the idea of catching them on our own if we absolutely have to.”

Salina

Officials intervene to stop bird attacks

After hitting a Salina couple hard enough to draw blood, a Mississippi kite finally went too far in protecting its two chicks when it dive-bombed police officers who had been called to investigate the aerial assaults.

Now the chicks have been taken by the Kansas Department of Wildlife and Parks to the Hutchinson Zoo, where they will be raised and eventually released into the wild. Local officials hope that by removing the young birds, the parents will mellow out.

“They have a habit of doing a dive-bomb act, which is kind of unnerving for some people,” said Mike Smith, a biologist with Wildlife and Parks at Wilson Lake.

PeeWee Maring said he had to have a tetanus shot after he was attacked Thursday while on his way to alert others about the hostile birds.

“I was walking across the street to tell my neighbors that my wife had been attacked three times by this bird,” he said.

After the birds attacked another neighbor, Maring said, police were called to deal with the problem Monday. Upon the officers’ arrival, one bird promptly swooped down at them.