Two Czechs and a Camuloonie (I had to look that up, and have absolutely no idea what it means) walk into a bar... and argue over who has the best birds. Something that could lead to a fistfight in the wrong circumstances, one suspects.
What an absolutely brutal matchup.... Colchester is sadly quite weak in this area, whereas Dvur has a very nice African Tropical House with walkthrough and adjoining aviaries.
Colchester are shockingly bad when it comes to avian delights, and Dvur are good but specialised. Can anyone give me a rundown on Ostrava's collection and how it's housed? At the moment I'm siding with Dvur but unfortunately their African focus is drawing me away...
Hmm, tough choice! Dvur of course has those tropical halls (one walkthrough, one with spacious aviaries for parrots and hornbills), a few nicely-stocked aviaries for turacos and passerines next to those, and three large aviaries for water birds outdoors. Ostrava is less bird-focused I'd say, but does have a lot of very nicely designed standalone aviaries throughout the zoo, many of them for raptors, but also ones in/next to the many pavilions throughout the zoo, and a nice New Guinean walkthrough aviary with some parrots, lapwings and honeyeaters. The main avian highlight is probably an entire area devoted to smaller Eurasian birds, with nice walkthroughs for many starling, bulbul and pheasant species, and even choughs. I'm currently placing my vote with Ostrava, but hoping zootierliste pops back online before voting closes, so I can hopefully refresh my memory a bit better with species lists. For now I'd say ostrava wins, because even though they lack a big highlight like Dvur's tropical house, they make up for it in enclosure quality of small standalone aviaries throughout the zoo.
Just to reiterate, Colchester are probably one of the worst 'mainstream' zoos in the UK for birds. This is a full list of the birds permanently on display (not including those that perform in the flight shows, which are kept off-display): - Common ostrich - Darwin's rhea - Domestic chicken - Domestic helmeted guineafowl - Chilean flamingo - Ruppell's griffon vulture - Eurasian griffon vulture (one individual) - Andean condor - King vulture - Humboldt penguin (in two enclosures) - Eastern grey crowned crane (in two enclosures) - Blue crane - Eurasian great grey owl - Rainbow lorikeet - Victoria crowned pigeon - Sumatran rhinoceros hornbill - A pair of rufous hornbills comprising one Northern rufous and one Southern rufous hornbill - Village weaverbird And that's it. Many of the birds are also not kept in the most impressive of exhibits; I have never been to Dvur Kralove or Ostrava but I could easily imagine both being considerably better on the bird front.
Fortunately both Ostrava and Dvur still publish annual reports with stocklists, so zootierliste is redundant for this discussion. Zoo Ostrava: http://www.zoo-ostrava.cz/soubory_texty/255_13.pdf Zoo Dvur Kralove: https://toolkit.ecn.cz/img_upload/9ac6cf8280fa9e44811499f11aac6d24/vyrocni-zprava-2017_1.pdf
