Birds of a feather....

As many of you already know, I'm a bit of a bird nerd. I love all things avian, especially psitticines or birds of the parrot species and corvids, which include magpies, crows and even birds of paradise. Recently at Billabong Sanctuary we have developed a free flight bird show, with the help of my very awesome housemate, Ryan or better known as "Eagle". In this show, which takes place everyday at 2pm, we fly different birds. In the current line-up is "Freeze" the Bush-stone Curlew, "Skwimm" the Tawny Frogmouth, "Guenther" the Australian Barn Owl, "Roxy" the Barking Owl, "Yasi" the Black Kite, and "Billy", the Sulfur Crested Cockatoo.

On the left is "Freeze" when he was only a baby and on the right is "Skwimm".

 On the left is Ryan with "Yasi" and on the right is me with "Geunther".

 On the left is "Roxy" and on the right "Billy" joins us for our morning break.

"Ash" on the left is on a perch during the day and guests can feed him sunflower seeds. On the right, "Selena" the emu rests her head on my shoulder.








Getting to work with these amazing birds is a real privilege but it gets even more fun for me as I work to train the new entries to the bird show! As I raised "Skwimm" I knew he was going to be a bird that the public would interact with so I did a lot of socialization with him to get him ready. With "Selena" I hope to walk her down to the show area and have her lie down with me while I show people what an imprinted bird behaves like then allow people to come and give her a pat! We are also in the process of training a chicken, a whistling kite and hopefully "Snugglepot" will eventually make an appearance flying in the show! We have 8 Swainson's lorikeets that I am training to fly to the show area, feed on nectar out of cups the public holds then fly back. I'm putting up a nest box with the hopes of hand raising a few so that interact with the public more.

Another fun part of my job is having the role of baby birdie momma. I get to raise the birds in my home and really enjoy all the things that go into the care of a baby bird. Sure they are noisy, and a bit messy but it's a very rewarding activity. Below is a sequence of the time that we raised the barn owls.

5 week old and still puffy.

Two week old fluff balls

Fully fledged and eating on their own.

"Geunther" coming down to the show area for his performance!

 On the left I am in a training session with "Roxy" and in the background "Snugglepot" can be seen looking on.
On the right, the two baby curlews huddled up on the rug at my house.








Next week I will be bringing home the new Red-tailed Black Cockatoo chick and again, the house will have gone to the birds!!! Stay tuned, more birdie action ahead in the coming posts!