Small Pleasures Week: Penguins at the Flamingo Hotel
Continuing our series on small pleasures in Las Vegas: the Flamingo Las Vegas, one of Vegas’s oldest remaining hotels, may not be the most elegant place on the strip, and it may not have the shopping and restaurant options of the newer casinos, but it does have one thing they’ll never have—Penguins.
Actually, they have a variety of different birds living in an enclosed outdoor area behind the casino, next to the parking garage. As you might expect, they have pink flamingoes, but the penguins outnumber them, and are far more entertaining to watch.
In case you’re wondering how penguins survive hot days in Vegas, don’t worry—these are African penguins and can handle higher temperatures than the typical antarctic varieties. They are native to warm islands off the coast of South Africa. They handle the summer heat by spending most of their time underwater, and since they’re not accustomed to the chills of a Vegas winter (temperatures in the 30s to 40s) their island is artifically heated.
They actually have professional zookeepers on staff to manage the birds, and if you go at the right time you can hear them talk about them while they feed the penguins. (They eat surprisingly large fish, swallowed whole, which is not quite as cute as you’d expect a penguin feeding to be.)
Other birds in the garden include various ducks, Crowned Cranes, and Ibises, along with the local blackbirds and sparrows that have moved in. There are waterfalls and ponds filled with colorful Koi. All in all, it’s a peaceful oasis right in the middle of the Vegas Strip, and you can easily spend a couple of hours there without spending any money. There’s a food court nearby and you can eat at an outdoor table while you watch the birds.
Directions: Flamingo Las Vegas is at the center of the strip, next to Caesar’s Palace. It’s a stop on the Las Vegas Monorail, so it’s easy to reach from other hotels on the strip.
When to see: When the temperature gets to 80 degrees or so, the penguins spend most of their time underwater to avoid the heat, so it’s best to visit them in the colder months, early mornings, or evenings.
- Official site: Flamingo Las Vegas: Wildlife Habitat
- More about African Penguins from National Geographic