ZSL London Zoo New Bird House

It must be.

I'd imagine it is named after the man who helped out the Zoo during their crisis at the start of the 90's. The first name escapes me, but i'm sure his surname was Blackburn.
 
The renovation has been paid for by a bequest especially for this project. Could it be the same person, who has now died and left the money to the zoo?
 
They are coming up with some innovative ideas at London. A walkthrough tropical bird aviary with the UK's only hummingbirds is a neat idea for this space.
 
Chris79 said:
They are coming up with some innovative ideas at London. A walkthrough tropical bird aviary with the UK's only hummingbirds is a neat idea for this space.
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I remember London zoo had this in the late 1960s so its not a new idea for them but worth having
 
MARK said:
I remember London zoo had this in the late 1960s so its not a new idea for them but worth having
Click to expand...

Yes, i read about this, but it didn't quite work out if i remember correctly, so they decided to pull the plug on the idea very quickly.
 
I dont know how long it went for but it was a real thrill being so close to them buzzing away just a foot or two from us.
 
The old Hummingbird/tropical bird House was between the Bird House and the Wolf enclosure, where the squirrel monkeys are now. It was a fairly small brick building with a glass roof. There was a central path and a shallow moat on each side, separating the public from some fairly thick vegetation. It had a range of small tropical softbills, although I can't remember hummingbirds there in the early '70s when I visited Regent's Park quite regularly. The birds I do remember are blue-backed manakins which bred there.
At that time, several UK zoos and bird gardens had free-flying hummers. Chester had some in the small mammal house. The old Birdland at Bourton in the Water had several walk-through tropical houses with hummingbirds (and one with red birds of paradise if my memory is correct).

Alan
 
Very intresting but according to my notes it won`t be the only place with Hummingbirds on show in the U.K as Tropicalwings has a Male Amazilla versicolor unless any one knows differently.
 
Minor update - recent article from the LES confirming that a pair of Amazilia hummingbirds have arrived at the zoo, and that there will be 50(!) free-flying bird species in the Blackburn Pavilion.

Hummingbirds fly into London Zoo | Evening Standard

Also ZSL's website is really improving. They've added a lot of info on the aquarium and Butterfly Paradise - hopefully we'll eventually get the same treatment for all the major exhibits.
 
Good job actually, doesn't look bad. The aviaries on the outside aren't quite in keeping with the building but they'll be a lot better for the birds. I like they way its retained alot of its older features, if they'd tried to modernise it'd looked a bit of a bodged job.
 
zoogiraffe said:
Very intresting but according to my notes it won`t be the only place with Hummingbirds on show in the U.K as Tropicalwings has a Male Amazilla versicolor unless any one knows differently.
Click to expand...

I didn't realise they kept species this delicate. It's hard to ascertain as they aren't the longest-lived birds if conditions aren't optimal, and Tropical wings does not contribute to ISIS. For similar reasons, I was assuming that Slimbridge may still have some hummingbirds in its tropical house....as they don't list their birds on ISIS either. Then again, unless they bred successfully, the original birds are likely to have died out by now.

Amazon World Zoo appear to have single birds of many sunbird species, but no hummingbirds, according to ISIS. I could be wrong, but I think the owners of Amazon World may be connected to/owned by a major importer of exotic birds in Essex, and may have acquired species this way rather than from other zoos, as I assume was the case for London, hence the difficulty in obtaining mates for all those sunbirds.

Hopefully London will be successful with their hummingbirds, but will several hundred thousand pointing schoolchildren entering the enclosure every year, who knows how long they'll last?!
 
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