The Parrot on a Stick Exhibit (and why it should end)

I also don’t think the practice is just because of rescues. But there are many exhibiting practices that differ between Europe and US zoos that are mentioned many times on this forum. It doesn’t necessarily mean one is better than the other. I can’t speak for every zoo mentioned here but I would guess that they are moving away from flight restricting parrots even when exhibited in this way. Operant conditioning has greatly evolved and I don’t think it’s impossible to train a parrot to stay in exhibit. I also feel in a zoo setting, some birds don’t feel the need to fly as much if they feel comfortable and flying consumes a lot more energy than climbing. If they don’t need to fly and aren’t reinforced to fly, they probably won’t.

We have 5 parrot species at CMZ and I personally work with one individual. 3 live in the free flight budgie aviary, one African grey lives behind the scenes but comes out for short interactions. His accommodations include a stall for himself, overhead walkways in the Keeper areas and multiple “sticks” the keepers take him on so he has social interactions throughout the day. He doesn’t like large crowds so he doesn’t come out too often. The one I work with is an eclectus male who lives in the rafters of my building which is open to the public so a pretty large indoor space. He also has multiple outdoor and indoor options to be and we are looking to build one of these “stick” exhibits in another area that he can go on nice days. It would not be his only option nor does he only have one other place to be. None of the zoo’s parrots are flight restricted as far as I know and with our eclectus, we don’t plan on flight restricting him when he goes to this new set up. Both him and the grey mostly choose to not fly but I have seen both fly on a few occasions. They also have choice as to where they want to go. If he doesn’t want to go outside he doesn’t have to.

So I guess what I am saying is that in my limited professional experience with parrots, flight restriction has never even come up in discussion when taking any flighted bird outside. Even when leaving them alone for periods of time. It’s all about risk and reward and IMO parrots are pretty low risk.

 

It is nice to see parrots, as well as birds-of-prey, used in programs where they're allowed to fly around more. Even if it is just from keeper to keeper.

 

It probably does in this case though, right? Unless your argument is that actually almost all stick exhibits feature birds who are not flight-limited.

 

Keywords “doesn’t necessarily”. Also why again are we talking about all of these exhibits as if they are all the same situation? Again, my point is don’t generalize and gain context for each situation before painting it all as bad. I can’t speak for any of the particular exhibits shown in this thread but I gave context from my institution which could be a similar situation for some of them. I heavily doubt every single one of these exhibits features flight restricted birds but I have about as much evidence as if we said they all do.

 

But the topic of this thread was specifically the Wildlife World and Omaha type of exhibitry, and those are objectively bad exhibits for many of the reasons given in the thread. No we do not know the exact situations of each bird (though for WW I wouldn't say any bird there has a good life) and I know for a fact that Omaha's birds spend fairly little time out on their sticks, but that doesn't mean the parrot on a stick exhibit is justified. For short presentations, yeah it's fine under that context, but as a full-on exhibit it offers virtually nothing good in terms of husbandry and, as mentioned but not really discussed at length, it gives a horrible impression to the public as to how these species can be kept. We are not talking about grand complexes of stick structures and ropes, nor are we really talking about the animals' behind the scenes life--yes it's been brought up and you do make a good point, although I have also seen zoos who legitimately lock their parrots in pet store cages; regardless it's not the main topic of discussion here. This thread and the majority of criticism thrown at these zoos is focused on the specific exhibition of parrots on a single branch with nothing else to it. It's a bad exhibit regardless of the outside context and that's the point. You can make good exhibits that feature parrots on sticks, but those typically aren't noticed as being 'parrot on a stick' exhibits because they tend to either be more naturalistic or they actually give the birds something to do besides stand there. Aside from educational talks, parrots shouldn't be being exhibited on sterile branches, period.

~Thylo

 

I feel like I can agree to this. I mostly just wanted people to keep more of an open mind and look at the individual situations rather than post a dozen pics of exhibits without context. I’m not defending most (some of them are quite bad in appearance. I’ve also heard some other not great things about how Wildlife World keeps many of their parrots before this so I’m already not a big fan of theirs) of these as I do not personally know the stories behind these exhibits and birds. The zoo world changes all the time and they are generally very open to change. Maybe if the members of this forum took some time to get the stories of these animals, there wouldn’t be as much to complain about and there would be more understanding is all. This coming from a boots on the ground person who’s major pet peeve is hearing guests make assumptions about an animal’s welfare after looking at it for 15 seconds.

 

For Jurong Bird Park, to prepare for the move to their new location, the large expanse aviaries are multiple-species exhibit that means groupings birds of different species together to see how they would thrive in an large aviary and if the birds would get along as they would in the wild and they are currently experimenting on moving all of their macaws to large free-flight aviaries.

 

Are the any of the walkthrough aviaries at the new park comparable in size to Lorikeet Landing or the Waterfall Aviary? (not sure we have an answer to this question)

 

It’s what I heard from the recent news from Jurong Bird Park News Thread.
To prepare for the move, the main aviaries have been re-themed like the waterfall aviary will be re-themed as a South American aviary and the macaws will be introduced into this aviary.

 

Eudora Wildlife Safari Park has fully-flighted macaws. How a non-AZA can do this so much better than OHDZ or San Diego is beyond my comprehension. One could say that this could be a matter of don't know don't care.

 

About parrots on sticks. My opinion, is that maybe sticks should only be used during presentations with birds capable of flying but controlled in an environment where they are comfortable. Also, wildlife world, the first example on this thread is truly a wild world of bird exhibits, Some macaws are in cages which can be somewhat accessible to the bird, such as the servere or illiger’s macaw, and the scarlet macaw exhibit, and then there’s that flooded area. There’s also an area full of ropes and branches and some houses which makes it somewhat ok for clipped parrots. Also, i didn’t see any trace of that disgrace of a flooded exhibit.

Then there’s the macaws chained to one branch at the start. Plus the macaws in the diversity of life amazon exhibit. Phoenix zoo is an offender as they have 1 macaw from my last visit near the stingrays at the uco forest.

Such a shame parrots with good flying abilities chained to branches all over america. AZA may do good at chasing down the bad roadside zoos (and the good ones as well, aza isn’t the best) but they have some weird standards.

 

After visiting Bird Paradise, I can't ever look at a parrot-on-a-stick exhibit the same way. Something about seeing scarlet macaws flying inside Crimson Wetlands was majestic. Parrots deserve better.

 

Before the construction of the Rákos house in Prague, there were some old aviaries for smaller species of parrots as well as an exhibit featuring macaws with clipped wings. However, this practice is no longer used in Czech and European zoos, or at least I hope it isn't.

@Baldur