The story of how a thermophilic bird miraculously turned out to be several dozen kilometers from the Arctic circle was told by journalists of the Znamya newspaper from Urai.
In early December, workers found an exotic flamingo bird frozen almost to death at the Severo-Semividovsky field in the Khanty-Mansiysk district. It was extremely exhausted and immediately trusted the man – they just came up to it and picked it up. It was brought to Urai by car and settled in a heated garage with the Repenko family.
- The chick was so weak that it had only a few hours left, - said Anna Repenko, a resident of Urai. - A bird came out to the workers at the field with legs on which there was bare ice. They thought it wouldn't survive. We bought a feeding probe, we were afraid that the chick would not be able to eat on its own.
There is not a single ornithologist in Urai and the surrounding area, there was no one to ask for help. Therefore, the Repenko family, which sheltered flamingo, turned to the volunteers of the Wild Animal Rehabilitation Center in Nizhny Tagil.
- We consulted with them via video link so that the guys could assess the condition of the bird, – Anna continues. – They explained to me how to feed properly: you need minced fish, gammarus, shrimp, ground into a pulp and diluted with water. We even bought earthworms at the fishing shop. But it turned out to be extremely difficult to feed it.
- Flamingo couldn't figure out where he was at all, where his body, wings, head were. So I held his chest, and my mother-in-law served him a bowl of food. And suddenly! He began to eat a little by himself. That's how we kept and fed him all day. And the very next day he ate by himself and even tried to pinch and quack us," Anna Repenko shares her memories.
As experts found out, a chick of about ten months came to the workers at the field. It became clear by the color - white-gray plumage, and only the down under the wings was slightly pinkish. The chick was named Fedya, although the newly minted owners never found out the gender of the flamingo. A few days later, the bird was picked up by Rosprirodnadzor employees and taken to the Wild animal rehabilitation center in Surgut.
Where flamingos appeared in Yugra in winter, no one knows for sure. It is known that this is not an isolated case. In Nyagan and its surroundings, passers-by saw a flamingo standing on one leg in the snow. Another flamingo was found nearby on the helipad.
There is a version that young and less hardy birds lost their way during a flight to warmer countries from Kazakhstan during the strongest hurricane that swept over almost the whole of Siberia this year.
Photo from the archive of the Repenko family