Field Trip

We went on a field trip to the Audubon Zoo in New Orleans yesterday with the Louisiana Aviculture Society. This included visits to the three aviaries as well as a behind the scenes tour.

We were hosted by Mark Myers,the Curator of Birds, and had a wonderful time. Once we convinced him that the people in our twenty-five person tour group bred and raised 50 times as many birds as he did at the zoo, he was more than willing to discuss and show us anything we wanted. It was especially interesting to see the food preparation area and discuss the dietary requirements of different birds.

We were disappointed that the zoo only had 5-6 psittacines. You would think that a zoo that is in the top 10 in the country, with the proximity of Central and South America, would have a representative display of birds from this region.

It seems that zoos in general have taken the politically correct stance of being in the species preservation business. This is admirable but the way to save species is to get public funding and awareness. Showy birds from South America would get a lot more visitors to the zoo than a bird that looks like the stump it is perched on.

Enough insensitivity...I hope our organization can include the Audubon Institute as one of the organizations we donate to this year.
- posted by J-Birds @ 6:34 PM |