Non-estrildid Australian passerines in US zoos?

[Zygodactyl]

As I mentioned in another thread, I'm reading Where Song Began, and this is reminding me how many Australian birds I'd like to see. (Like the author, I'm including both Tasmania and mainland New Guinea in Australia.) I'm pretty sure every Australian parrot in captivity can be found in some zoo, zoos tend to have a wide variety of estrildid finches, and magpie geese and laughing kookaburras are also common. Australia also has a large number of duck species I'd like to see, but I'll leave that aside for the moment, since most of the Australian birds I most want to see are songbirds. (I wrote "passerines" in the title, but the only non-songbird passerines Australia has are broadbills and I'd love to see one of those as well.)

The Australian songbirds I'd most like to see are the lyrebirds (either or both species), apostlebird, white-winged chough, scrubbirds (either species), Australian magpies, and any species of honeyeaters, though I'd be happy to see most any Australian species. (I'm usually happy to see birds period, except common starlings.) I'm also interested in bowerbirds and birds of paradise, even though I've seen both before and thus know US zoos have them.

I'm fairly certain that to have any chance of seeing a scrubbird I'd have to go to Australia, seeing as both species are currently endangered but even Australian zoos don't seem to be captive-breeding them. I looked up all the other birds of particular interest to me on Zootierliste, and observed that with the exception of the lesser friarbird (held by Wuppertal) and the Australian magpie, all the birds which most interest me are formerly but not currently held by European zoos (including both species of lyrebird, at one zoo each). However the US seems to do worse than Europe when it comes to birds, so it wouldn't surprise me if no US zoo ever held any of these except maybe Australian magpies.

Still, I never expected US zoos have to have kagus, so I've decided to be optimistic. It still seems plausible to me that American zoos might have Australian magpies, and maybe some farsighted zookeeper somewhere obtained honeyeaters or lyrebirds.

Even if they haven't, bowerbirds and birds-of-paradise are fun to see, and I know that Miami and San Diego have fawn-breasted bowerbirds and tons of zoos (including the Dallas World Aquarium) have Ragianna birds-of-paradise. And maybe some Australian songbirds that wouldn't even have occurred to me are present in US zoos.

So yeah, aside from the cases I mentioned, does anyone know of US zoos with Australian passerines which aren't estrildid finches?

 

[birdsandbats]

Brookfield Zoo has Blue-Faced Honeyeaters.

 

[zoo_enthusiast]

Brookfield Zoo has Blue-Faced Honeyeaters.

Bronx Zoo has the Australian magpie

 

[Chlidonias]

(I wrote "passerines" in the title, but the only non-songbird passerines Australia has are broadbills and I'd love to see one of those as well.)

Which broadbills do you think occur in Australia?

 

[Zygodactyl]

Which broadbills do you think occur in Australia?

I got broadbills confused with pittas somehow. My mind works in peculiar ways. Still, I'd be happy to see any pitta that's not the hooded pitta, so my point stands.

 

[Zygodactyl]

The San Antonio zoo has blue-faced honeyeaters! I know that I was interested in honeyeaters the last time I went, so either I forgot in the excitement of some of their other birds (they have a lot of neat birds and I had memorable experiences with three of them last time), or else they weren't on display.

This time I had a great experience with them and wouldn't have forgotten even if I hadn't started this thread. After thinking I wasn't going to see them, I went back to the cage one last time and they both flew out to investigate me (not sure why they didn't do that the first two times I was at the cage). Then I went back to the cage one last time for real and one of them flew out to investigate again.

 

[Ituri]

I made this list some time ago so I’m not 100% certain of its accuracy. Technically, some of the species found in US zoos aren’t the right species due to some taxonomic changes (emerald dove, for example) but it’s all relatively close.

Southern Cassowary

Emu

Magpie Goose

Spotted Whistling-Duck

Plumed Whistling-Duck

Wandering Whistling-Duck

Cape Barren Goose

Freckled Duck

Black Swan

Australian Shelduck

Radjah Shelduck

Green Pygmy-Goose

Cotton Pygmy-Goose

Maned Duck

Australian Shoveler

Garganey

Chestnut Teal

Pink-eared Duck

White-eyed Duck

Australian Brushturkey

Blue-breasted Quail

Little Penguin

Black-necked Stork*

Cattle Egret

Straw-necked Ibis

Black Kite

Buff-banded Rail

Painted Buttonquail

Sarus Crane

Brolga

Bush Thick-knee

Masked Lapwing

Silver Gull

Emerald Dove

Common Bronzewing

Crested Pigeon

Squatter Pigeon

Wonga Pigeon

Diamond Dove

Wompoo Fruit-Dove

Rose-crowned Fruit-Dove

Collared Imperial Pigeon

Pied Imperial Pigeon

Tawny Frogmouth

Laughing Kookaburra

Blue-winged Kookaburra

Collared Kingfisher

Dollarbird

Palm Cockatoo

Red-tailed Black-Cockatoo

Yellow-tailed Black-Cockatoo

Gang-gang Cockatoo

Pink Cockatoo

Galah

Long-billed Corella

Little Corella

Sulphur-crested Cockatoo

Cockatiel

Superb Parrot

Regent Parrot

Princess Parrot

Australian King-Parrot

Red-winged Parrot

Eclectus Parrot

Bourke's Parrot

Turquoise Parrot

Scarlet-chested Parrot

Port Lincoln Parrot

Mallee Ringneck

Crimson Rosella

Eastern Rosella

Pale-headed Rosella

Western Rosella

Red-rumped Parrot

Mulga Parrot

Hooded Parrot

Golden-shouldered Parrot

Double-eyed Fig-Parrot

Budgerigar

Musk Lorikeet

Rainbow Lorikeet

Scaly-breasted Lorikeet

Blue-faced Honeyeater

White-breasted Woodswallow

Australian Magpie

Fawn-breasted Bowerbird

Metallic Starling

Painted Firetail Finch

Diamond Firetail Finch

Star Finch

Plum-headed Finch

Zebra Finch

Double-barred Finch

Masked Finch

Long-tailed Finch

Black-throated Finch

Blue-faced Parrotfinch

Gouldian Finch

 

[Zygodactyl]

Unsurprisingly, most of those are either parrots or estrildids, both of which are also well-established in the pet trade. (Indeed those two groups pretty much are the avian pet trade.) The part of your list which answers my question consists of five animals (three of which I've seen), though you seem to be looking at Australia the country, since several New Guinea species I know are found in the US are omitted. The big surprise is the white-breasted woodswallow. I would not in my wildest dreams have thought that an American zoo would have woodswallows. Do you recall which zoo(s) had them?

Also, while my question was about non-estrildid passerines, as I said I'm also interested in Australian waterfowl (also parrots but those are usually advertised on zoos' websites and they dominate both the Australian birds zoos have and the parrot collections zoos have), and four of the five Australian waterfowl I really want to see are on that list: freckled ducks, maned ducks, pink-eared ducks, and Cape Barren geese. (Musk ducks, sadly, are not.) Since none of those except for the pink-ears are particularly colorful or weird looking (and those seem to be the criteria for waterfowl) I'm pleasantly surprised at that too.

 

[jayjds2]

I would not in my wildest dreams have thought that an American zoo would have woodswallows. Do you recall which zoo(s) had them?

Also, while my question was about non-estrildid passerines, as I said I'm also interested in Australian waterfowl (also parrots but those are usually advertised on zoos' websites and they dominate both the Australian birds zoos have and the parrot collections zoos have), and four of the five Australian waterfowl I really want to see are on that list: freckled ducks, maned ducks, pink-eared ducks, and Cape Barren geese. (Musk ducks, sadly, are not.) Since none of those except for the pink-ears are particularly colorful or weird looking (and those seem to be the criteria for waterfowl) I'm pleasantly surprised at that too.

I have seen woodswallows at Cincinnati and Miami.

Most of these waterfowl are established because of the work of Mike Lubbock, who runs Sylvan Heights Bird Park. The only holder of pink-eared duck besides them is currently Central Park, though San Diego formerly had the species. Freckled ducks recently expanded rapidly, and zoos such as Sedgwick County, Miami, Busch Gardens Tampa, Fort Worth, and Columbus now hold the species, among others. Maned ducks are a bit of an oddity which I’ve seen at San Antonio and Omaha. Cape Barren geese are probably the most common of all of those species. An attempt was made to establish the musk duck in captivity but it was unsuccessful.

 

[Zygodactyl]

I was just at San Antonio. I was looking through the signs along the row that holds crocodilians, turtles, and waterfowl for anything interesting on my way to the Hixon Bird House, but I wasn't super-methodical about it. Are they in that area, or somewhere else?

Are the woodswallows at Miami in Wings of Asia? I find new surprises every time I go (which is partially because I've never been able to spend as much time as I want at any visit); I'd love to spend a whole day in that aviary sometime. (Hell, I'd kind of like to live there.) But even with a whole day I probably wouldn't even have noticed them if I didn't know to look for them; I only noticed the bowerbird for the first time last year because he was making a racket.

 

[jayjds2]

I was just at San Antonio. I was looking through the signs along the row that holds crocodilians, turtles, and waterfowl for anything interesting on my way to the Hixon Bird House, but I wasn't super-methodical about it. Are they in that area, or somewhere else?

Are the woodswallows at Miami in Wings of Asia? I find new surprises every time I go (which is partially because I've never been able to spend as much time as I want at any visit); I'd love to spend a whole day in that aviary sometime. (Hell, I'd kind of like to live there.) But even with a whole day I probably wouldn't even have noticed them if I didn't know to look for them; I only noticed the bowerbird for the first time last year because he was making a racket.

I have seen them in multiple areas of the zoo. I do not know where they are at present.

Yes, the woosswallows are in Wings of Asia. All you have to do in that aviary is open your eyes, and look up.

 

[Ituri]

White-breasted Woodswallows are also at San Diego and Sedgwick.

 

[birdsandbats]

Brookfield Zoo has Blue-Faced Honeyeaters.

The San Antonio zoo has blue-faced honeyeaters! I know that I was interested in honeyeaters the last time I went, so either I forgot in the excitement of some of their other birds (they have a lot of neat birds and I had memorable experiences with three of them last time), or else they weren't on display.

This time I had a great experience with them and wouldn't have forgotten even if I hadn't started this thread. After thinking I wasn't going to see them, I went back to the cage one last time and they both flew out to investigate me (not sure why they didn't do that the first two times I was at the cage). Then I went back to the cage one last time for real and one of them flew out to investigate again.

Lincoln Park has them too. Milwaukee just got some also.