Kobe animal kingdom has full-flighted pelicans which is rare for a Japanese zoo. To my knowledge most of them are pinioned.
So this place having a full grown Saddlebill is an accident waiting to happen??? Never heard of a deadly Marabou attack in a zoo. I know that Stefan Verhoeven said that a Saddlebill severely injured someone when it was getting captured. this is what he said from this earlier thread: "We had to catch the saddle-billed stork to check his feet. The bird was criple and we were afraid it had bumblefeet. We came in the enclosure with three people. Two with a piece of plywood to corner it and with a cloth to cover it's head (and I was the third person and carried veterinary equipment). At that place it was the way they normally catch marabou. Marabou normally attack with open beak, but the saddle-billed stork attacked like a spear fisher. It came with his neck over the piece of plywood and pecked 1 person twice and the other person once before we could intervene. The wound on one person was so big and deep, you could see the bone of the upper arm. Since then I can never understand why they are sometimes kept in walk thru aviaries. And I am always a bit nervous when getting close by one.." - @Stefan Verhoeven I know that Jabiru's are super aggressive and are the right size to do some major damage: I think this Marabou in Dierenpark Amersfoort's Snavelrijk was just annoyed. If he was truly upset it probably would've been a different outcome: I've noticed that when Ephippiorhynchus storks jab they have both their mandibles closed whereas Leptoptilos have their mandibles open. I saw it in action with Saddlebills in Tampa and in St. Augustine for Marabous. Therefore, I would assume that Jabirus, Saddlebills and Black Necks would cause more damage with the force of both mandibles hitting you together with more lbs of force per square inch at one point. I heard that Sarus Cranes can stab at 10-15 lbs/sq inch with their bills. Storks with more massive bills I would assume jab with at least 30+ lbs/sq inch. The giant herons often strike faster and possibly produce more force.
The naturalist and museum neotropical bird collector George K. Cherrie (1865-1948) recounted two incredible stories of Jabiru Storks. The first was regarding the War for Venezuelan Independence (1810-823): "A small company of Venezuelan soldiers were entrapped by Spanish troops. . . . At daybreak, [the Spaniards] made ready to attack, but suddenly wheeled about and rode precipitately in the opposite direction. . . . The Venezuelans were overjoyed to see in the dim light of dawn a long line of soldiers in white coats with red collar bands and shiny black caps marching at a double quick straight towards the Spanish camp. The Spaniards, believing that enemy reinforcements had arrived, mounted their horses and fled." -Brooklyn Museum News 1908 Also, he recounted an experience in Natural History Magazine about how he went to collect Jabiru for the Brooklyn Museum and one stork was fully able to walk off after being shot with a Mauser 30-30 rifle. When Cherrie was about to retrieve the body the stork got up and walked away. This Jabiru was fast enough with a bullet through its body and two broken wings to escape. Talk about a super tough bird!!!
A regular great blue heron or a white stork can easily take out a human eye or stab through a human hand to the other side. So it is nothing special, simply those birds are afraid of humans. For walkthrough aviaries, the core is to design space so that the birds can spread themselves peacefully, and put a walking path so that birds have space away from it. I think it is now repeating earlier threads, but herons are under-represented in zoos mostly because they are predatory to smaller birds. Cranes as breeding pairs are very often aggressive towards other birds and visitors, too. However compatibility is mostly about available space and temperament of individual birds, less character or size of a species. There are now several beautiful walkthrough aviaries in Europe which have mixed species of vultures, secretarybirds, buzzards and smaller eagles. A giant aviary at Eagles du Leman, France has about a dozen raptor species. This year, 9 species bred successfully inside. It was a bit scary to see a huge lappet-faced vulture, species confirmed predatory in the wild, sharing space with visitors, much smaller birds and also a flock of sheep used as lawnmowers. But it works. I am sure larger zoos can learn much from those smaller bird parks.
There's White Storks in Omaha's Simmons Aviary, but I'm not sure if they can fly or not. The aviary has a colony of fully-flighted American Flamingos but it also has a pair of pinioned Black Crowned Cranes, and I'm not sure what the status of their storks is.
Bioparc has fully flighted cranes (African crowned and marabou) vultures (I think Egyptian is one of them) and ground hornbills, which they use in their bird show (Not my video by the way)
There's at least one incident of an adult human being killed by a black-necked stork, so there's that argument against walk-throughs also. I've worked with super-aggressive cranes before, though, and I've seen those in walk-throughs, so who knows, maybe part of it comes down to the individual bird as well.
Here's the link to that story about the person being killed. It was part of a ritual that has been discontinued since the 1920's. I'd like to think that clearly it happened because the stork was being harassed and it was just trying to defend itself. From what I've seen zoos in Southeast Asia/Australasia keep Black Necks behind a 3-4 ft fence with no incidents and there's even one in a bird show in Australia Zoo's Crocoseum.
From what I've seen in the zoos I've been to, larfe flighted birds are generally kept in aviaries that are big enough for them to at least fly around, wing-clipping isn't that common any more. That being said, I have seen a couple of places that keep their Flamingo flocks in open-air enclosures, but how common thuis is I don't really know.
Which species? Were they only aggressive during the breeding and nesting season? Did you have to use a riot shield when going into their exhibit?
Sandhills - the aggression from the male was pretty much year round, though there was a seasonal peak. I used a rake to hold him at bay while I serviced the exhibit. If he had been something larger, like a whooper, I probably would have wanted better protective gear. I wear glasses, so that at least let me feel like I had some eye protection (my boss at the time loved to tell and retell the story he had of a guy who'd lost his eye to a crane). This male crane was somewhat adept at hopping his exhibit fence and had to be re-caught fairly often until we finally fixed it. Once he was outside of his enclosure, he was nowhere near as aggressive, even when we grabbed him - perhaps he knew he was out of his territory. I've also worked with grey-crowned crane, didn't get anywhere near the same levels of aggression.
The wild Sandhills I've been near don't show any aggression even at close quarters. I wonder if its possible to rank crane aggressiveness based on the specific genuses as which are the least to most aggressive among Balearica, Anthropoides, Bugeranus, Antigone, and Grus. I have heard no issues with Crowned Cranes. They seem pretty chill unless you're trying to take their eggs.
I think the biggest issue with crane aggression is with hand-reared males. Male wattleds are really aggressive but in last few years i have worked with two parent-reared reared birds and they are not bad at all.
Landau Zoo Keeps African crowned Cranes inside their African Bird Walkthrough. They have had Chicks on my Visit. Bad Mergentheim Wildlife Park has Black Storks in a Walkthrough Aviary. Bad Mergentheim does have a Walkthrough Vulture Aviary but If is only Open during the Vulture Keeper Talk.
To care about the animals and human safety problems, vultures, condors and storks (not Ephippiorhynchus or Jabiru) are the safest ones for a free-flight aviary. Vultures and marabous can be a good cleaner of dead animals. They can be mixed with many species of birds.
