Maleny Bird World Maleny Bird World

animal_expert01

animal_expert01

Well-Known Member
10+ year member
I visited Maleny Bird world today. It is privatley owned and consists of a botanic garden and 4 bird aviaries. You walk around the gardens independently however entry into the bird aviaries is done several times a day and is guided by a staff member. Around 90% of the birds here are unwanted or abused pets or birds rescued from the wild. Some birds we also the owners and members of staffs pets. Once you enter the property you come to a house which is where you pay for entry. There is also beside the entrance a place where you can get your photo taken free of charge with birds. The birds here were and African Grey parrot, a couple of alexandrine parrots, a yellow crowned Amazon, a couple of Indian ringnecks, a female Ecelectus and a couple of sulphur crested cockatoos. Once you enter the gardens there are many large ponds (or small lakes, depending on your point of view). The gardens themselves actually provide many wildlife watching opportunities. Due to the many ponds a lot of wild waterfowl is present throughout the gardens. I saw wild peewee, torresian Crow, Australian magpie, little pied Cormorant, pacific black duck, dusky Moorhen, lewin’s Honeyeater, rainbow Lorikeet, Swamp hen, bush turkey and little grebe. The little grebe was exciting for me personally as I had never seen one before. There is also helmeted Gueina Fowl free ranging throughout the property. Now to the aviaries. There are four aviaries, an Australian Native aviary, a softbill aviary, a large parrot aviary and a medium parrot aviary. The softbill aviary and medium parrot aviary both had small ponds for some very large goldfish.

I have developed a species list, however it will be inaccurate as there will be some birds I missed and I know there were some birds present that I couldn’t indentifyand even some the staff couldn’t indentify! There are absolutely no signs inside the avairy eithier. Because many of the birds are from the pet trade many birds are mutations or hybrids. There are also many birds which came from abusive homes with are missing toes or and even legs.

The Softbill Aviary:
Pied Imperial Pigeon
Gouldian Finch (white breasted and normal)
King Quail (silver)
Canary (red and yellow)
Domestic Pigeon (pouter)
Luzon bleeding heart
Red Faced Parrot Finch (pied normal, pied sea green and sea green)
Society Finch (pied and normal)
Star Finch
Zebra Finch
Caique
Mallee Ringneck (an escapee from the Australian aviary)
Talpacolti Dove
Spotted Turtle Dove
Barbary Dove
Alexandrine Parrot
Red Fody

The Australian Aviary:
Sulphur Crested Cockatoo
Galah
King Parrot
Red Tailed Black Cockatoo
Yellow Tailed Black Cockatoo
Carnabys Black Cockatoo
Mallee Ringneck
Rainbow Lorikeet
Scaly Breasted Lorikeet
Red Wing Parrot
Ecelectus Parrot
Princess Parrot
Superb Parrot
Crimson Rosella
Pale Headed Rosella
Female Bowerbird (these were very hard to identify, to me they looked like satin bowerbirds but nobody I talked to at the park had any idea what species of Bowerbird they were)
Galah x Sulpher Crested Cockatoo
Major Mitchell Cockatoo

The Medium Parrot Aviary:
Cockatiel (normal and pied)
Budgie (blue and green)
Cuban Finch
Lilac Fronted Amazon
Plum Headed Parrot
Indian Ringneck (blue, green and yellow)
Yellow Collared Macaw
Green Cheecked Conure (Lutino)
Sun Conure
Red Fody

The Large Parrot Avairy:
Blue and Gold Macaw
Scarlett Macaw
Blue and gold x military Macaw
Blue and gold x Scarlett macaw
Alexandrine Parrot
Japanese Quail
Golden Pheasant x lady Amherst Pheasant
Rainbow Lorikeet (lutino and normal)
Red Collared Lorikeet
Indian Peafowl (albino and pied)
Dusky Lorikeet (yellow phase)
Pearly Conure
Blue throated Conure
Black Capped Lory
Rosy Faced Lovebird
Ecelectus Parrot

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Overall, I very much liked Maleny Bird World. They have an amazing array of birds (for Australia) and I greatly recommend everyone a visit. They do a fantastic job of rescuing and taking in unwanted birds. The only real negative I have about the place is the large number of mice that were present in the large parrot aviary, but these are a given if you are going to keep birds. I will upload photos to the Australia Other gallery because as far as I am aware the bird park dosen’t currently have a gallery.

There were two finch species that I wasn’t able to identify which were both present in the softbill aviary. I do however have a picture of both so hopefully somebody here will be able to identify them.
 
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The aviaries altogether cover about a 1400 metres squared according to their website. The softbill, and medium parrot aviary were of a similar size while the large parrot aviary was the largest. The large parrot aviary would have been about 20 metres long by about 10 metres wide, while the softbill and medium parrot aviary were around 10 metres long and around 5 metres wide. The Native aviary was a cube, being around 15m long and 15m wide.
 
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Forgot to mention there were Bourkes parrots in the softbill aviary. If a mod could edit these into the list, delete the last paragraph and fix the few typos I missed, that would be greatly appreciated!
 
animal_expert01 said:
... and little grebe. The little grebe was exciting for me personally as I had never seen one before.
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I presume you mean Australasian Grebe. I don't think Little Grebe have ever been seen in Australia.

:p

Hix
 
animal_expert01 said:
I was talking about Tachybaptus novaehollandiae.
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Australasian grebe, then. Little grebe is an African species. I presume this facility is located in Queensland? There was no mention of location in your review.

By the way I have only seen Australasian grebes in captivity twice before, once in the Wollemi Aviary at Taronga and in an exhibit in the Aquarium at the Territory Wildlife Park. In both cases they made good exhibits. Does anybody know if they have bred in captivity?
 
MRJ said:
By the way I have only seen Australasian grebes in captivity twice before, once in the Wollemi Aviary at Taronga and in an exhibit in the Aquarium at the Territory Wildlife Park.
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I've seen them in the Wollemi Exhibit too, and at the Alice Springs Desert Park. Nowhere else, which is surprising for such a common species. And I haven't seen Hoary-headeds or Cresteds kept anywhere.

:p

Hix
 
MRJ said:
Australasian grebe, then. Little grebe is an African species. I presume this facility is located in Queensland? There was no mention of location in your review.

By the way I have only seen Australasian grebes in captivity twice before, once in the Wollemi Aviary at Taronga and in an exhibit in the Aquarium at the Territory Wildlife Park. In both cases they made good exhibits. Does anybody know if they have bred in captivity?
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It is indeed in Queensland. It is in the hinterland behind the Sunshine Coast.

The facility itself is located very close to Mary Cairncross National Park, which I would recommend a visit to if your in the area and you have time. The National Park has many bird species, including paradise riflebird, woompoo Pigeon and coxens fig Parrot. There are also numerous red legged pademelons around the park. There’s also a small pond near the visitor centre which often houses pearsons Tree Frog tadpoles.
 
I visited Maleny Bird World last week and have posted photos in the gallery.
Maleny Bird World - ZooChat
Overall, I saw a great diversity of species and some new species of parrot for me (Green Rosella, Red-capped Parrot, Carnaby's Black Cockatoo, Yellow-collared Macaw, Lilac-crowned Amazon, White-fronted Amazon etc.)
Maleny Bird World offers a very interactive experience and some of the parrots are very curious and will climb all over you. For example, at one point I had a Sun Conure messing with my hair, a Lilac-crowned Amazon Parrot on my shoulder and a Alexandrine Parrot on my arm. At times this made photography difficult but it was a very enjoyable experience (apart for the a Little Corella who decided to latch onto my ear...).
Anyways, it was great to see so many birds (mostly ex-pets, some from very traumatic backgrounds) to be re-homed to such a lovely place.
Also, they were also renovating the finch aviary at the time of my visit.
A great place to visit if your into birds. :)
 
I visited Maleny Bird gardens last week and thought to post a quick update. The most recent addition to the place is the farmyard which features mostly "mini" farm animals - miniature donkeys, pigmy goats, mini pigs, plus chickens of various kinds (not as many bantams as i would expect if they're trying to go "small") rabbits & guinea pigs. Guinea fowl were seen free ranging, and a keeper said there was Peafowl free ranging, but i only saw Peafowl in the aviaries.
I really enjoyed the tour of the aviaries, although the only species that you wouldn't find in a good bird shop were 4 Satin Bowerbirds (1 cock, 3 hens) The 1st aviary for mostly smaller birds also had a large wild carpet python resting on the wire on the roof! The keepers were aware of it but assured me it couldn't access the inside. The highlight for me was seeing 16 macaws all flocking together in 1 aviary, and there was also a few additional macaws in other aviaries. At one point, they all flew off screeching as something startled them. I also enjoyed seeing several hybrid macaws including a "Millygold" macaw (Hybrid between a Military & Blue & Gold Macaw) We spent about 2 1/2 hours there before heading to Wildlife HQ for the afternoon. I didn't see any pheasants which i was disappointed about, but i suspect i saw everything else listed on the signs. I noticed many of the parrots prefer to perch right up against the roof or walls on the beams - most of the female Eclectus Parrots had found small dark "holes" where the beams intersected and were guarding them like nesting hollows - they don't appear to breed any of their parrots. I will upload some more photos soon, although they don't really show anything different to the previous photos in the gallery.
 
A pair of California Quails and a flock of eight Nicobar Pigeons have arrived at Maleny Bird World. Both are new species for the facility. Even more notably, they have acquired a large group of exotic lories including a Coconut Lorikeet and a pair of Black Lories, Chalcopsitta atra which are rare in Australia. A visit might be due soon - reported on their FB page.
 
The new batch of lorikeets and lories are now on-show in the Australian aviary and have been released into the space. A Dusky Lory, Black Lories (!), Red Lories, Rainbow Lorikeets, Coconut Lorikeets (!) and Scaly-breasted Lorikeets are shown - reported on social media.
 
WhistlingKite24 said:
The new batch of lorikeets and lories are now on-show in the Australian aviary and have been released into the space. A Dusky Lory, Black Lories (!), Red Lories, Rainbow Lorikeets, Coconut Lorikeets (!) and Scaly-breasted Lorikeets are shown - reported on social media.
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Wow, never thought I'd here of Coconut Lorikeets in an Australian zoo.
 
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