Preferably in the Southeast USA where I can let the birds be outside for pretty much most of the year due to the warmer temperatures.
Maybe better to say two whistling duck species live in Africa. There are species of whistling duck found in Asia and Australia as well.
I've been thinking about it and I've decided on the spoonbills because there's less chance of predation on ducks like the Yellow Bills and the fact that I like the two colors red skin tones with white feathers. For a spoonbill they're rather long legged and tall and the Yellow Bills seem kinda short for a stork in my opinion. That's ok because I'll have Marabous in a separate area. I'lll put my final aviary list down in the next post. But if it was an Asian aviary, it would definitely be Painted Storks as the winners!
Aviary List -1.1 Grey Crowned Crane (Balearica regulorum) -3.3 African Spoonbill (Platalea alba) -1.1 Abdims Stork (Ciconia abdimii) -1.1 Hadada Ibis (Bostrychia hagedash) -1.1 African Wattled Lapwing (Vanellus senegallus) -1.1 Cape Shoveler (Spatula smithii) -2.2 Yellow Billed Duck (Anas undulata) -1.1 Maccoa Duck (Oxyura maccoa) -1.1 Ross Turaco (Musophaga rossae) -1.1 Emerald Spotted Dove (Turtur chalcospilos) -1.1 Red Bishop Weaver (Euplectes orix) -2.2 Blue Breasted Cordon Bleu Finch (Uraeginthus angolensis)
A very respectable list, and honestly, outside of the spoonbills, you could acquire all of those birds with relative ease in the US! My only advice on the stock would be to up your finches and weavers. In an aviary the size you would need to house all the larger birds together, you're never going to see only 6 finches, and factoring in potential predation from the Abdims, the population has the potential to dwindle quickly. My advice would be to start with a much larger number of finches. Somewhere in the range of 8.8 Cordon Bleu's and 4.6 Weavers, at a minimum.
Great idea on adding more cordon bleus and weavers! I was also going to add a small group of Lesser Flamingos but the only place I found for them was Pinola Aviaries and I don't think they sell those to aviculturists so I left them out. Theaviary would be a large retention pond type area with plants surrounding the edges and a few trees (like cypresses) submerged in the shallows like at the real Rift Valley Lakes.
A simple question that just crossed my mind that is only sort of related to the discussion at hand here, but, are Red-Billed Queleas obtainable in the private trade in the US?
After going back to the zoo recently, I've changed my vote and decided on the storks. Thanks everyone for voting although I still really like African Spoonbills!
