LAS VEGAS, Nev. (FOX5) – FOX5 confirmed with an MGM spokesperson that there will be no Bellagio Fountain shows Tuesday night as wildlife officials respond to a rare bird who landed in the water.
“We are happy to welcome the most exclusive guests,” Bellagio Las Vegas said in a social media post.
The post continues saying the Fountains of Bellagio are paused as state wildlife officials rescue a Yellow-billed Loon.
The casino says it’s one of the 10 rarest birds in the U.S.
“This particular loon is a pretty rare bird,” Kurt Buzard with the Henderson Bird Viewing Preserve told FOX5 Tuesday. “There’s only about 10,000 of them in the world, and they breed in the Arctic.”
Buzard reports that this loon was first seen on February 26 in Henderson at the preserve after getting blown off course during a migration north to Alaska. He guesses the bird got lost after leaving the preserve.
“It’s an odd thing that it would come to the Bellagio fountains, where there are so many people,” Buzard noted.
This is a younger loon, Buzard says, which he thinks might explain why it’s so lost. The usual migration pathway for yellow-billed loons takes them along the coast, where the fish they eat live.
“It’s really off-course here,” he said. “Very unusual to see a bird like that here. And unfortunately, it landed in two places without proper nutrition.”
There are no fish at the preserve or in the Bellagio fountains.
“It may well have, hopefully, gone to Lake Mead because it really needs nutrition in order to continue its migration,” Buzard said.
After looking for the bird in the fountains Tuesday evening, Buzard thinks he knows what happened to it.
“Once it landed here, I think that it was probably confused and a little frightened, and it just stayed out in the middle there, hoping to sort of figure it out,” he predicted. “And probably at this point, it’s figured it out and gone on its way.”
As of late Tuesday night, the Nevada Department of Wildlife says it doesn’t know if the bird has left the fountains and is continuing to monitor the situation.
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