How Do Zoos Properly Take Care Of All Their Birds in Aviaries?

[BerdNerd]

Sorry if my question wasn't clear. Let me explain. As far as I know, every animal a zoological park owns has to have at least one checkup every year to check for diseases, injuries, etc. I imagine that must be a challenge to capture every single bird in an aviary (especially the huge ones like at the SDZ). It can be especially challenging if a large amount of those birds are small, agile ones (passerines, hummingbirds, etc) and I would think they would be super hard to catch. So how do zoos do it? How do they manage to ensure every single individual bird in their aviary is healthy? Do they set up traps for them? Or do they just send zookeepers into their enclosure with nets?

 

[Onychorhynchus coronatus]

Sorry if my question wasn't clear. Let me explain. As far as I know, every animal a zoological park owns has to have at least one checkup every year to check for diseases, injuries, etc. I imagine that must be a challenge to capture every single bird in an aviary (especially the huge ones like at the SDZ). It can be especially challenging if a large amount of those birds are small, agile ones (passerines, hummingbirds, etc) and I would think they would be super hard to catch. So how do zoos do it? How do they manage to ensure every single individual bird in their aviary is healthy? Do they set up traps for them? Or do they just send zookeepers into their enclosure with nets?

I haven't worked with birds (though I'd like to do that on the side sometime) but I know people who have and have worked alongside people who have and have witnessed the procedure of their care in zoos.

Believe it or not, one of the main challenges with ensuring that birds are healthy in captivity and probably the first one is actually telling whether a bird is healthy or unhealthy to begin with. Birds usually hide illness / sickness very well (this is innate behaviour to avoid predation) until the point that they get really sick and it becomes obvious and often by that point it can be too late.

A good bird keeper is one that knows the animals well enough individually to be able to spot the subtle signs that something may be off in their behaviour so there are typically daily brief checks of the animals and any signs reported or recorded. Some sicknesses of course will be species specific so these are easier to identify and to manage because there is some anticipation of this which allows time to prepare.

The signs of some sicknesses are pretty obvious though in terms of food not being eaten (if there is one or only a few within the enclosure) or clear signs within the feces, obvious inactivity / listlessness or in the case of PBFD in parrots which comes with significant feather loss.

If it is a sickness that is infectious it is really of paramount importance to remove that sick animal as quickly as possible and put it in isolation to stop transmission to its cage mates or to other bird species kept in the same area (same as with people in the current pandemic).

When a bird is sick typically keepers will enter the aviary with hand held capture nets but ideally catch the bird as carefully as possibly in order not to stress the animal out as stress is an immunosuppressant and can make them even sicker.

 

[TinoPup]

Many zoos do frequent training sessions, so the animals all come in when needed. They'll use different calls for different species or individual birds, for example. With larger species, like hornbills, they tend to be trained to go into crates.

 

[birdsandbats]

I was at Brookfield once when keepers were trying to get a Sunbittern out of the rainforest aviary for a check-up. They had a trap with some food in it, with a keeper waiting there watching. When the Sunbittern flew in, the keeper pulled the string, captured the Sunbittern, and carried it off.

 

[Zooplantman]

An interesting question.
When I started researching mixed species free-flight aviaries forty years ago I contacted many bird curators at zoos in the USA. A large number were clear that they didn't like or approve of free flight aviaries precisely because it made it more challenging to manage the birds' health. Most preferred old-style small enclosures with a few birds and one or perhaps two species. Easy to catch up and examine.

 

[FBBird]

All large mixed enclosures need a ‘management area’, a small enclosure where new birds can be introduced, and birds to be removed/monitored can be baited in and caught up. Keepers will ideally know how many birds they have, of each species, and check them all in the course of the day.

 

[Valentinoamor]

Weighing birds is the easiest way to discover any illnesses that they may have. As O.C. mentioned, birds are remarkable when it comes to hiding illness - as many prey animals are - and it would be difficult to try and spot illnesses in an aviary.

I'm assuming that facilities have their birds trained to voluntarily step onto a scale to be weighed.

 

[Jurek7]

Some aviaries have feeders by default installed inside cages. This makes it easier to catch individual birds for inspection.

By the way, if you are visiting a large communal aviary, it is better to locate all feeders and spend 20 min at each, rather than searching for the birds hiding in the foliage, often against the light.

 

[Great Argus]

In many cases the first food of the day is offered under keeper supervision, recording who shows up and who doesn't. In most cases smaller species will have colored ID bands on their legs to help with this. A good keeper will also know the hangouts for an individual or particular species, to have a better idea where to start looking if they don't appear for food.

As others have said, many larger species are trained to take food from keepers and/or step on a scale to allow close observation of the bird. Some are crate-trained, depending on the individual bird's willingness to participate.