Update: The chick is named Ramón, a Spanish name that means “protector.”
Earlier: Woodland Park Zoo has spent the last two months trying to find out the identity of a little boy who helped rescue an abandoned Humboldt penguin egg. The boy hasn’t been found, but the zoo still plans to name the two-month-old chick in his honor.
The boy was visiting the zoo in April when he told a zookeeper that he saw an egg outside of a nest on a ledge in the penguin exhibit. The keeper was able to retrieve the egg and place it under a set of foster parents. The healthy chick hatched two days later.
The rescued penguin chick getting a check-up shortly after hatching. Photo by Dennis Dow, Woodland Park Zoo.
Later today, the zoo will announce the chick’s name.
The biological parents of the rescued chick are 4-year-old mother Sardinia and 9-year-old father Groucho. The foster chick was moved from the nest a few weeks ago to a behind-the-scenes room where it is being conditioned to approach keepers for feeding and swimming in a small pool where it is more controlled and less crowded. The nearly full grown chick will join the colony of penguins in the outdoor exhibit in mid-summer.
