"He is in the nest with his parents right now and we're trying to see if we're going to be able to get him to poke his head out while his parents are being fed," Tim Snyder, curator of birds, said.
No such luck. The chick's mom, Salsa, came out of the nest box alone, leaving the 6-week-old chick inside with dad. That chick's still hiding.
And the baby bird wouldn't be here at all if not for a little zoo magic- thanks to a dummy egg and a fertile egg from Columbus Zoo.
"What we did when the egg came from Columbus we actually slipped the dummy egg out from beneath the parents and put the real egg from Columbus underneath them and they accepted it with no problem," Snyder said. "Like magic."
This little chick is a foster chick. His egg was brought to Brookfield Zoo from Columbus Zoo because the harsh winter made incubating difficult at Columbus Zoo.
Salsa and Ceviche, both 10, were chosen as foster parent penguins because they have successful raised chicks in the past and had their own infertile egg. That infertile egg was replaced with the dummy egg, and then the dummy egg was replaced with the fertile egg. On February 20, the male chick hatched.
