UK Career aviculturists: It's time to dream again...

Hey, as ever, it's been a while since I wrote. I've had opportunities to write not only here, but elsewhere, but my desire to only write when I have something worth sharing has stuck fast. This last year I have seen a wild proliferation of the use of artificial intelligence to write not only online posts, but in some cases whole articles on bird keeping. To some degree this seems to cheapen the experience of reading about our craft. In that sense I have found myself reading more from my physical library, which represents the efforts of real humans, with a real passion, put forward in a time when producing such work required genuine effort and love for what we do.

Over this summer, I've tried to step away from the busy world of online society, whilst still staying in touch as best I can, with others in my life. It's been quiet, and I've had a lot of time to reflect on things in-between work, sleep, and all those other human requirements. The reason behind this is that in the last year, I have found myself increasingly worried about the future of zoo aviculture in the UK (Where I'm based), and not in the usual “not enough new bird keepers” way, but a deeper, indescribable feeling that I cant quite put into words. It feels in some strange way, that large scale, nationwide, progressive and cooperative aviculture is on its way out, there is an unusual sense among many (not only myself, this seems to echo in many conversations I have with other UK keepers) that career zoo aviculturists are a dying breed. Reductions in bird holdings and indeed complete eradication of the taxa in some UK institutions, although well intended through bird flu fears, has denied the zoo aviculturist their natural habitat and in turn denied many future keepers the chance to specialise in this diverse and demanding area.

In some ways it feels like the traditional model of a healthy mix of charismatic avian species and as Gerry would say “little brown jobs” in need of our attention has given way to a model where only the highest priority/popular species have any real hope of long term survival and often in only a small handful of collections whom have either the funds or dedication to work fully with these species, even then, not all are secure by any means.

 

Toucans - A challenge, but 100% worth the effort.

A small example group which are prime candidates in this case are the toucans. Toucans have it all, they are the archetype poster child for charismatic birds, yet in the UK, for as long as I can remember, they have struggled to maintain good populations, through a combination of poor husbandry and lack of awareness, indeed right now this is still the case. I could 100% say with confidence that 15 years ago the UK toucan populations in zoos were doomed. More birds died then of haemochromatosis and acute bacterial infections than were ever bred, and both of the UK collections that did manage to regularly breed them in helpful numbers have now either closed, or abandoned toucans altogether. The situation was dire then, and it continues to be dire now.

How then, I hear you ask, do at least a handful of these species remain on display across the UK? It seems such a prophecy has not come to pass? - Until you dig a little deeper... the beauty of our modern records systems allow us to see a huge amount of data at the touch of a button, and sadly in most cases it seems that the current populations that remain are not descended from the original birds bred 15 years back, those birds are gone, this is a second flush, a population composed of a mix of private acquisitions sourced from presumably mainland Europe, import confiscations and the like. Thus, 15 years from now the same will still be true, UK toucans were unsustainable then, and are unsustainable still, without a great amount of action in the coming years. Where that action comes from, who can say.

This tragedy seems even wilder when you consider that this is an S tier group of birds. These are a holy grail of high brow bird keeping, and whilst they lack the direct endangerment based conservation messaging we see with hornbill species, they are still fantastic in terms of engagement as not only a bird icon everyone knows, but also a flagship species for the areas they inhabit. Indeed if they were easier to keep, breed and house, I'd wager that they would have already secured a permanent, unquestionable seat at the zoo table alongside flamingos, penguins and the like.

Anyway, that's enough toucan talk, but there is a theme here. A couple of years back I wrote an article (will add link at end if I remember) that outlined my vision for the future of zoo bird keeping. I won't dive too deep as you can read it in full if you wish, but the crux was this: To improve engagement and move away from traditional stamp collections of birds, we need to switch it up a gear, create large, interactive walk-through aviaries with modern management facilities that can house and display a huge variety of species, also improving their welfare, whilst holding on to some traditional blocks of flights for the more fine tuned species that don't always play well with others, or need some privacy. This is no brand new vision, just an expansion of the traditional model that has loosely existed for a long time, with the reality of increasing costs and increasing need to improve welfare factored in. There is a financial reality to everything done in a zoo, and to those still out there building new, modern and exciting things for birds, I applaud you, it is no easy feat in this age.

Sadly, in the UK at least, there seems to have been several factors that continue to really blood suck bird keeping, and to be clear, I have no real strong feelings on these, but lay them out here as hard facts that shape our reality. These are firstly the ban of imports of wild birds, this on the whole is a good move, as the numbers of wild birds being stripped out of nature to sustain this trade were shocking. Many younger keepers will not be old enough to remember pre ban days, but I vividly remember visiting one importer as a kid, the air stank of what I now recognise as a mix of baytril and metacam, two drugs that back then were the cure for everything. Species brought in there were unimaginable, 4 species of toucan, handfuls of rollers, bee eaters and whole flocks of parrots. One thing that always stays in my head was a flock of easily over 100 red bellied macaws, fresh in from the wild available for £99 each! I can confidently say that all of those birds are dead now, in spite of being a long lived species in the right hands. It was a shameful time and looking back now, also a shameful waste of the birds that did make it here. Regardless of my opinion on it, the ban had a somewhat chilling effect on the diversity of species, genetic diversity and general numbers of birds seen in UK zoos, this also coupled up with a positive move toward phasing out privately purchasing birds. It is ironic that most of the charismatic zoo bird species that have survived up to now in the UK are descended at some point from these private stocks.

The second main obstacle in the last decade has been fear, fear of avian influenza. In the UK we adopted legislation to protect the farming industry fairly early on and still now that seems to be the main focus of avian influenza related activity. Though zoos now have more of a look in when it comes to this, there are still crippling limitations placed on birds in zoos that do not appear in other taxa with anywhere near the regularity we see in bird based situations. Things like closures, foot dips, extra biosecurity, all great measures in controlling a disease, but ironically these same measures are off putting to those with the investing power when it comes to development in zoos. The question is fair, why invest in a brand new state of the art aviary that may need to be closed half of the year when the same money could create a year round, hassle free experience for guests using another taxa. It's everything that bird keepers hate to hear, and I wish I could say that I haven't seen birds phased out of new projects for this very reason, but it is sadly an increasingly common attitude, even amongst those with historically strong avicultural backgrounds. Whilst by comparison, reptile and amphibian keeping seems to have come on leaps and bounds in the UK, bird keeping has in many ways stagnated horribly.

This brings us onto the third factor: decay. As mentioned earlier, there was a great growth in bird collections in the UK in the last century, mainly between the 1960s and 1990s, before the above factors really started to bite in. Ethics aside, this has left many zoos with ageing infrastructure and a few decades worth of depreciation and underinvestment when it comes to aviaries and facilities. Many of the most notable aviaries were built in this time, but are now in need of urgent repair or replacement to secure their future, and some zoos are just opting to not secure that future. The reduction of birds in UK zoos, sometimes given for various reasons, welfare, ethics etc... are often in truth tied directly to this reality, that the last couple of decades of uncertainty have really battered aviculture here in that sense. The more alarming aspect is also the closure of entire bird collections. One would like to think that in times of economic uncertainty these collections would refine, adapt, evolve. But in truth, what happens is that without love and vision from those with influence, they just die. The last 20 years has seen the evaporation of many once very well respected and seemingly immortal bird collections which contributed heavily to filling the gaps between the big zoo bird populations, whilst being able to also focus on more niche work that otherwise would not happen in bigger, more homogenised collections.

 

The entrance of Leeds Castle Aviary, a wonderful, but now lost collection that was one of the few UK zoos to regularly produce toucan chicks.

All this factored in with the lack of investment into the nuts and bolts of aviculture, the holding and support facilities, the kitchens, all that jazz, has in some areas created an odd desert, where a few aviaries exist in a zoo, but not enough to justify a full department, or the connected conservation efforts that would have come with that in the past. Indeed Curators and team leaders of birds, are an increasing rarity these days by comparison, which also has an impact on the ability of collections to focus development on avian projects and develop strong, dedicated avicultural teams.

It is not of course all hopeless, there are still a few very dedicated bird facilities and several big zoo departments who still bat heavily for birds of all types, but with the decreasing network of bird collections and by extension reduction in bird holding and investing capacity, these collections will have to continue to bear the weight of that torch alone for many years to come, and even to them, this may come at a cost to some of the species housed there.

So I've roughed out here why things seem to feel so flat at the moment, and in my usual way, now we need to discuss some of the ways this could be addressed. I'm going to focus more on keepers here as I've previously written on the wider idea of institutional improvement and I'd be hashing old ground.

I would say that as bird keepers in the UK, there is more of an obligation placed on us now to push, grow and dream than there has ever been. In an environment where there is a lack of real excitement, we must be the excitement, we must bring the ideas forth to push our taxa to the forefront where guests can enjoy them in all of the same beauty and glory that we do. We need to get them out there, to everybody, most importantly the people with control over investment in our facilities, invite them for coffee with your team, show them the birds, allow them to see what is often missed in the offices and boardrooms of the world.

On a serious note, we have to be open to evolution also, we cannot afford to sit back and make demands about what we need whilst offering nothing else in return. Wherever you can do so without welfare compromise, think about experiences you can develop and offer, aviaries that you could adapt to create some form of extra income from the space, find ways to help chip into the bills and make birds more viable and attractive, after all, as we know, we already have a fair few hurdles to start with! It is too often that keepers are able to say where money should be spent, but not offer any ideas about where it could come from.

 

A youngster engages directly with a zoo bird, this could be the moment that creates a new bird lover.

 

If you're lost for ideas, think about what you enjoy so much about your birds, could you offer that in some controlled way to a gaggle of birdwatchers willing to pay for that joy too?

It's also really important to mention that we also have a huge responsibility to grow, in an environment that increasingly offers less opportunity that before. I realise how unhelpful this sounds, but if the remaining career aviculturists in the UK do not put their best foot forward and start climbing the ladders and speaking for birds in the higher levels of zoo society in the future, who exactly can we expect to? How can we hope to justify creating new roles and spaces for birds when there is nobody speaking for them at the table? This is a mighty challenge, but not an insurmountable one.

It's true that the UK zoo aviculture community was much more vibrant and abundant 15 years ago, and that we have seen a slow burn decline of sorts, but I genuinely believe that another kind of scene is possible now that was not possible before. In that previous era, enrichment was a buzz word, training and welfare were things circuses did for amusement and animal rights folks talked about a lot, they were not documentable, learned skill sets that existed in many keepers as they do now. We may have a tougher lot in one respect, but my generation, and the one following it will be the best academically educated generations of aviculturists that have ever existed. We have to weaponise this for the benefit of our birds wherever we can, even if that means sometimes putting on the “showman” hat and finding new ways to help fund the aviaries of tomorrow.

 

A lorikeet aviary at the Indianapolis zoo - granted, the interior could be more complex, but this offers multiple choices to view, enter and presumably also feed the birds if guests wish.

Being utterly honest (which is a good or bad habit of mine, depending on who you ask) things seem difficult in the past few years, but there is a great future possible if we reach out and grasp it, but it will not come without dedication beyond that of average keeper work.

Here's a recap of things we can all work on;

• Grow – Climb the ladder, take on new and productive things, embrace the chaos it brings.

• Speak up – Be a voice not only for your own charges, but also the taxa as a whole.

• Get involved – wherever you can have a say on new ideas and projects, get in there and push birds to the forefront, but just remember to come equipped with some new productive and helpful ideas.

• Don't lean into the idea that closing aviaries long term and creating obstacles is always a good thing for the security of our birds, sometimes it can spell doom for an avairy if no sensible plan can be reached.

• Grants – there are grants out there for many things in the zooniverse, many go unclaimed because nobody puts forward ideas. If you have a vision but large funding seems unlikely, create a smaller proto-vision that is fundable through grant money and demonstrates a concept clearly, this will show your idea is sound in principle and help convince others it is seriously worth a shot. If not, you still have a cool feather for your cap and a boost on your CV.

• Dream big – we can't drum up all of our dreams with the magic money tree, but if a dream is only a copy of something that would be cutting edge in 1985, you're not really helping anybody. Make sure what you work towards is meaningful, contemporary and ideally a step forward in what it is you are doing.

• Stay motivated – let's not kid ourselves, being a keeper is tough, and at times can get you down and tired out. None of us make huge money, but what can serve as our motivation can be an internal drive to innovate... let your hopes and dreams for your birds carry you when your body is to tired to. Keep spinning those plates.

I think that's about all I have to say on this at the moment, granted it is bleak in places, but life is sometimes bleak, and I'd be doing a disservice if I tried to sell you otherwise. The takeaway here is that in the absence and decay of the structures that would support us on a bigger scale, the hope lies with keepers to course correct and steer the future back on track. We have more tools to do so now than ever before.

I'll leave you with a simple mantra that does not come from the animal world, but a world which in some ways echoes many of the tough realities of keeping, the world of fast paced kitchens and gourmet food - from the man who trained both Gordon Ramsay and Heston Blumenthal.

“We live in a world of refinement, not invention.” - Marco Pierre White

I hope that has been a thought provoking and artificial intelligence free experience for you, and if you have read this in full, thanks, I'm glad to be bringing you something of use. Below is the link for my previous, markedly more peppy article on the future of zoo aviculture if you are still hungry for more.

Till next time (whenever that is!?)

Stay Birdy,

C.

 

Heres the link to my 2018 article on improving the future of zoo aviculture:

The death of the living stamp collection - An immersive and higher welfare future for all birds.  

If you've made it this far and are still excited to learn more, you might be interested to know that we have set up a facebook group to help push forward thinking birdkeeping and discuss challenges and ideas. You can find it by searching Aviology: aviculture 2.0 on facebook or use the link HERE.