Berlin Zoo mourns oldest resident Ingo the Flamingo

Flamingo Ingo stands in the sunlight in a small lake next to his fellow flamingos at Berlin Zoo in 2018 (Gregor Fischer/dpa via AP)

A zoo in Germany is mourning Ingo the Flamingo, its oldest resident, who has died at what is believed to be at least 75 years of age.

Ingo, whose place of origin is unclear, had lived at Berlin Zoo since the mid-1950s.

The zoo announced his death at an “imposing” age in social media posts on Wednesday.

It said that a ring on the bird’s leg with the inscription “Cairo, 23.6.1948” indicated what is believed to have been “his minimum age”.

Flamingo Ingo stands in the sunlight in a small lake next to his fellow flamingos at Berlin Zoo in 2018 — Flamingo Ingo standing in the sunlight in a small lake at Berlin Zoo in 2018 (Gregor Fischer/dpa via AP)

Ingo was, the zoo added, “truly a legend!”

He had lived at the zoo in what was then West Berlin since the summer of 1955, when he arrived from the Tierpark zoo in the divided city’s communist east.

The inscription on the ring was discovered only a few years ago.

Ingo is believed to have fathered descendants, but detailed records were not kept on young flamingos, German news agency dpa reported.

He had limped a little recently and sometimes appeared to need a rest from his fellow flamingos, standing aside from them, but lived well beyond the roughly 30-year average life span of flamingos in the wild.