They poke their heads out of a warren on Hamlin Avenue and take orders, then retreat into their sugar hole; a few minutes later, a human being brings you food. The Sugar Hole puppets are an ...

staff train the bird's instincts onto a hand puppet that's crafted to look like a real vulture. The decades-old technique is used to ensure the chick doesn’t identify too closely with its human ...

Human and puppet limbs are entwined, and there is a sense, both comforting and disconcerting, of a group-individual, like the shadowy figures who merge with the dark in Goya’s Black Paintings.

The new king vulture chick, which is yet to be named, is the first of its kind to be hatched at the Bronx Zoo since the 1990s.