A 6,000-MILE journey to save rare birds has finally ended in Torbay.

Staff at Living Coasts, Torquay's coastal zoo, have received some very special eggs.

The wildlife conservation attraction is home to the only South African bank cormorants in any zoo anywhere in the world and it now hopes to breed them with youngsters hatched from eggs collected in the wild.

Ten eggs have been collected from South Africa under licence, flown the to UK and rushed into isolation for hatching at Paignton Zoo.

The operation is part of a drive to establish a captive population to help secure the future of the species, which is classified as endangered.

Living Coasts's head keeper Lois Rowell prepared the quarantine room by cleaning and disinfecting it, and stocked with equipment, including a freezer to store food, a kitchen blender, scales, an incubator, a brooder and heat lamps for the young birds.

The eggs are now in an incubator and when hatched the chicks will go into the brooder.

When older they will go into a small pen under the heat lamps.

Lois said: "We will weigh both the chicks and their food.

"We need to keep a record of how much each chick eats and their daily weight gain.

"They will be fed with liquidised herring and sprats from a syringe every few hours from early morning to late at night."

The quarantine will last for 30 days after the last egg has hatched. During that time Lois and her colleagues will use foot baths, gloves and disposable overalls.

The eggs were collected by Living Coasts's senior head keeper Tony Durkin from wild nests where they are threatened by destruction.

No one will know what sex the birds are until some time after the eggs have hatched.

The bird, also known as Wahlberg's cormorant, is found in Namibia and the western coastline of South Africa.

Numbers have declined sharply recently due to commercial fishing, increasing human disturbance and the gull predation on eggs and chicks. The world population is probably now around 4,000 birds.