Plains-wanderer hatchlings snuggle up to feather duster ’father’

The captive population of Australia’s most unique critically endangered bird has doubled thanks to a plan hatched by Werribee open range zoo in Victoria. Last week, nine plains-wanderer chicks came into the world within 24 hours of each other. One of the clutches was hatched in an incubator and raised under the paternal care of a feather duster after one of the fathers, a four-month-old who was daunted at raising his first chicks, stopped sitting on them.  Within four days, the zoo director Glen Holland s