Erie Zoo hopes to add these animals to its exhibits in 2024
Visitors to the Erie Zoo will see lots of familiar animal faces after it opens March 1 for the 2024 season but no new residents just yet.
The zoo does expect to add multiple birds and at least one deer, and officials are hoping to eventually have one or more birth announcements this year. But Scott Mitchell, the zoo's director of development, said none of that will happen until sometime in spring or later. He said it's too early, and in some cases too cold, to ship animals now and no pregnancies have been confirmed.
More: Everything you need to know about visiting the Erie Zoo
What's coming to the zoo
Members of three species of birds and one species of deer will be moving to the zoo this year, Mitchell said.
A pair of Madagascar teal, which are small ducks, will be located in the Main Building exhibit that already features six sacred ibis, which are long-legged birds.
A female black crake, a black waterbird with pinkish legs, will join a male already living in the African Bird Room at the zoo's Kiboka Outpost. Mitchell said the hope is they will breed.
A small flock of speckled mousebirds, both male and female, will also be added to Kiboka Outpost, he said.
In Safariland, which can only be viewed while riding the zoo's train, one and possibly two female Père David's deer will be added to the female already there, Mitchell said.
What might be coming
Zoo officials are hopeful that its male and female Canadian lynx, who made it through the introduction process before mating season in March, will eventually welcome kittens this year. The zoo's current male, Hunter, was one of two kittens born May 15, 2018, at the Erie Zoo.
"If we do have kittens, they would be born sometime between May and early July," Mitchell said.
He said it is also lemur breeding season, but there have been no confirmed pregnancies yet among the zoo's black and white ruffed lemur.
What isn't on the way
No replacement is headed here for Joe, the Erie Zoo's beloved male orangutan who died in 2022. Mitchell said the zoo wouldn't introduce another male orangutan to female Dasa until Otis, her 7-year-old son with Joe, was older and moved on to another facility. Otis' older brother Ollie left Erie for the San Francisco Zoo in 2019 when he was 9 and older sister Leela, who was born here in 2003, left in 2012 for the Toledo Zoo.
Mitchell said there are no short-term plans to have a male lion join lionesses Eva and Desta. A third lioness, Nala, died in 2022.
He also said the zoo isn't currently taking steps to acquire another Amur tiger to join the remaining female, Nuri. The zoo's male, Victor, died in 2022, leaving female Tikva alone until Nuri arrived in May 2023. Then Tikva died in October.
Dana Massing can be reached at dmassing@timesnews.com.
This article originally appeared on Erie Times-News: Erie Zoo aims to add these new animals in 2024
