Red Billed Chough's (Old Orangutan enclosure)

The new Red Billed Chough enclosure. This used to house the Sumatran Orangutans before the new enclosure was built in the 90\'s. The Chough\'s are part of a reintroduction project to the coast of Jersey.

Not much of the old Gorilla House left now. It looks like the dens are now just a single shelter area?

It makes a nice enclosure for the Choughs but I wonder if two pairs of Choughs will breed in one enclosure? They are territorial and I know Paradise Park in Cornwall where these came from keep their individual pairs seperate for breeding.

Red Billed Choughs

The old enclosed dens are still there at the back. What you see in this photo is more like a veranda along the front. I doubt they will leave both pairs in here to breed.

The indoor house is currently being used by the Herps department to hold Mountain Chickens before they are shipped back to Montserrat very soon.

if they relocate one pair to another aviary in the next few weeks, they may get both pairs breeding this coming season.

Having visited Jersey Zoo (sorry, "Durrell") many times over the last 30 years, I saw the gorillas, the Sumatran Orangs and finally the Livingstone's Fruit Bats in this enclosure, though I haven't been back since 2004 so have yet to see the choughs in it. Looking at the photo, it's really hard to imagine that great apes once lived in there. Do the choughs have the aviary to themselves, or do they share with other bird species?

No they are in there on their own.

Thanks for that, Jersey Gorilla. I'm hoping to get back to Jersey this year and I'm looking forward to seeing all the new developments and new animals since my last visit nearly 7 years ago. The chough aviary does seem very big for just two pairs of birds. I think I would have been tempted to put two or three species of ducks in there as well for added interest.

I think the idea is to replicate clifftop natural habitat as closely as possible as birds(hopefully) bred in here will be used for later release so need to learn to feed like wild birds etc.

Thinking about it more, it's probably entirely right that the aviary should be devoted to Red-billed Choughs and nothing but the choughs. To have any other birds in there would only detract from the choughs. As long as the choughs are the only species in the aviary, visitors are made to realise that the birds must be very special.