LEGO Zoo #0005: Flamingo Pool

This week's design features my first animal not conveniently pre-manufactured by LEGO.  The problem with building anything lifelike out of LEGO pieces is that you inevitably lose some level of detail and end up with something that looks like it's from the mind of Dr. Eggman.  I've got several manufactured animals in backlog, but I thought this one looked good enough to go ahead with a full enclosure.  Hopefully you can recognize it:

The Chilean flamingo (Phoenicopterus chilensis) can be found along the Andes mountain range and across much of southern South America.  They are a popular species in zoos worldwide for their tolerance of a broad range of habitats and climates.  In the LEGO Zoo, our breeding pair of flamingos lives in a marshy enclosure with shallow, muddy pool, just they way they like it:

Your may recognize the recurring rockwork frame that I've used already as the basis for the turtle terrarium and raven flight cage.  Here it makes good backdrop for a small water feature:

Flamingos lay a single egg at a time on a mud nest.  Letting the pool have a natural muddy substrate allows the flamingos to display their natural behavior.  Here the female watches over her chick-to-be:

Flamingos are filter feeders with specialized beaks for filtering food out of water..  In the wild they feed on algae and small crustaceans that are high in beta carotenoid pigments.  These pigments give the birds their characteristic color.  In zoos flamingos are fed nutritious pellets that contain pigment supplements.  The flamingos will mix the pellets with water to make them easier to swallow:

A raised viewing platform gives zoo visitors a better view into the enclosure:

One of the advantages of using the freeform mode in this design program is that you can used combinations of bricks and colors that LEGO would never actually manufacture, for example these transparent plates.  They do allow for some interesting angles; just think of this as being underwater.

As with my previous sets, this one is made up of a series of interchangeable parts.  Expect some of these to show up again in later sets.

The advantage of interlocking parts is that they can be recombined with other sets, as seen here with the reptile terraria from a few weeks ago:

A bigger enclosure also means more space for a bigger flock:

Trivia from recent news:  The oldest flamingo on record recently died at the Adelaide Zoo, leaving only one flamingo on the entire continent of Australia.

Animals and Minifigures:
Carlos, Chilean flamingos (2)

Created with LEGO Digital Designer