I believe Blue-headed Macaws and Illiger's Macaws are expected to debut early 2018. Yellow-headed Amazons may also join in at Parrot Paradise. Lesser Adjutant Storks have moved from River Safari to Jurong. The park is busy re-shaping its collection in preparation for the new facilities at Mandai and we should expect a number of new species arriving.
And while on the topic of yellow-faced birds, Yellow-faced Myna (Mino dumonti) is back in the collection, at Wings of Asia. Also there are Bearded Barbets (Pogornis dubius) at the Waterfall Aviary and Red-fronted Barbets (tricholaema diademata) at Heliconia Walk. The Scops Owls have moved to the Night Safari in a nice new enclosure mixed with Spotted Chevrotain.
@Calypto, I am glad there is a renewed focus on threatened S.E. Asian tropical song birds. I would like to the new projected combo at WRS Mandai area to also include that marvellous hornbill and birds of paradise collections. I am pretty confident that various species of the more unusal macaw, parrot, parakeet and cockatoo will also feature prominently here ...
@Kifaru Bwana It sounds churlish to say it, but I wish Jurong had a good BoP collection. Compared to Bali Bird Park for example, it's a little limited. And certainly it can't match the hornbill aviaries, one of my all time favourite exhibits.
I don't think that's really a fair comparison, though. Jurong keeps 5 species and Bali keeps 7. Yes, Bali has more species, but I doubt they have more individuals and breed their birds of paradise nearly as often. Either way, 5 species is still nothing to sniff at. If my list is slightly correct (and I think it is for the larger collections), there are only 5 zoos in the world with more species. However, Walsrode only keeps 4 of their species on-show, Al Wabra is entirely off-show, and the parks in Port Moresby and Lae are, well, in New Guinea itself... If you want to see birds-of-paradise outside of New Guinea, Bali is indeed the best place, but Jurong is right up there with it. For comparison, Plzen keeps 156 passerine taxa and Walsrode only keeps 106. I don't think you'll hear anyone here saying they wish Walsrode had a good collection of passerines, though...
I cannot make any informed judgement between the 2 as I have never visited the Bali Bird Park facility, nor Bali as an island destination for that matter. So, forgive me for going by what I have seen in South East Asian zoos (and admittedly most zoos have - then - even less birds of paradise on show. Note: Singapore Zoo, Avilon Zoo, Dusit Zoo, KB Jakarta et cetera.
Behind the large on-show aviaries is a series of smaller aviaries in which one can usually pretty reliably see the king and twelve-wired birds of paradise. I agree that doesn't fully count as on-show, but is more so than in Walsrode, where the off-show birds-of-paradise are impossible to see (and even the on-show ones sometimes prove difficult!). Here's a picture of the male king bird-of-paradise I took in July 2016, to provide an idea of how visible they can be if they cooperate. This picture was taken from the platform in the left or central aviary: (uncropped, with 250mm zoom) What two species were on-show when you were there? I saw raggiana, lesser and red (in that order, from left to right) when I was there, though the raggiana's were labelled as lesser.
My statement was definitely problematic @Vision makes a very good point about breeding as well. My point is that after the hornbill aviaries you are totally glutted, whereas the BoP cages leave you wanting more. As @Najade says, success with the rear aviaries is not at all guaranteed, and on at least one of my visits I've had to be satisfied with just one species in total.
I saw Lesser and Red and even they didn't give me the best views. I also saw Twelve-wired ok-ish (seen it before at Walsrode) and King (could only tell because of the colour) in the back with binoculars. Still better than nothing...
You're right! I read this in disbelief but just checked my photos and I can see a female Raggiana's BoP. Well spotted! So @Zooish & @FunkyGibbon - we saw them!
I only found this out while going back through my pictures as well! It's interesting because I specifically asked keepers in that aviary where the Raggiana's were, and they said they weren't currently in the zoo... How odd.
Article about the king penguin-chick : Jurong Bird Park announces birth of first king penguin chick in nearly a decade
Anyone heard of a supposed international avicultural conference to happen in Jurong sometime this year?
More new birds have been added to the park in recent months. It seems like the new collection will have lots of columbidae. White-crowned pigeon (Patagioenas leucocephala) Crested quail-dove (Geotrygon versicolor) Blue-spotted wood dove (Turtur afer) Wonga pigeon (Leucosarcia melanoleuca) Brush bronzewing (Phaps elegans) Ashy wood pigeon (Columba pulchricollis) Barred cuckoo-dove (Macropygia unchall) Chestnut-naped imperial pigeon (Ducula aenea paulina) Malagasy turtle dove (Nesoenas picturatus) Bruce's green pigeon (Treron waalia) Brown-breasted barbet (Lybius melanopterus) Nyasa lovebird (Agapornis lilianae) Yellow-faced parrot (Alipiopsitta xanthops) Also the Gentoo penguins have gone on display at Penguin Coast.
I have no clue. There was a Seaworld care manual next to the brooders when the penguins were still at the breeding centre. Could be generic reference material though.
It will definitely relocate. If construction goes according to schedule, the Jurong site should close at the end of 2019 or early 2020, and the new bird park at Mandai will open in mid 2020.
