Neighborhood News: When Feeding Is Also Puppeteering

The Bronx Zoo's baby king vulture gets its lunch from a bird on the hand.

- By Christopher Bonanos

A FEW DECADES AGO, William G. Conway—the late ornithologist who's largely responsible for reimagining the Bronx Zoo as the conservation-minded institution we know today—had his upper lip bitten halfway off by a king vulture. Apparently, however, it didn't put anyone there off the vulture business because the zoo has gone to significant lengths to breed a new one. Hatched on February 25, this tiny as-yet-unnamed creature in the fluffy white feather shrug looks fully prepared for the Raptor Met Gala. He or she—nobody's sure till a DNA test is done—is the offspring of two birds who were fixed up on their first date here in the Bronx. The father is 55 years old and arrived at the z