Smithsonian National Zoo Smithsonian National Zoo News 2023

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Andrew_NZP said:
Based on signage put up at the zoo the now 6 year long wait for the new bird house should finally come to end sometime this March.
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The Bird House officially opens March 13th! Member previews will begin March 3rd and last until the 12th.

Bird House Reopens at Smithsonian’s National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute

Bird House

Here's a fact sheet that includes a species list for each aviary + outside yards.

https://nationalzoo.si.edu/sites/default/files/documents/bird_house_backgrounder_complianced.pdf
 
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Wow, those photos look fantastic! And they really stuck to the theme inside the building as far as species goes; I sort of expected the coffee farm aviary to have a mix of migratory songbirds and regular tropical birds, but it's mostly the former. Glad to see they're keeping a lot of those outdoor species the same though, like the kori bustard and whooping crane.
 
Amazing species list with many lifers for me and probably other folks. Its interesting as a birder I have seen most species in the wild but very few of these in captivity. The displays themselves also look great. Well worth the wait.

Hope to visit maybe next year :)

What will be in the outdoor walk through by the way?
 
nczoofan said:
What will be in the outdoor walk through by the way?
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I have no clue, and the lack of mention of the Great Flight Aviary anywhere (unless I've somehow missed it) is interesting to me. It also seems like some species might not be on exhibit when the area reopens, since the exhibit page says "As guests make their way through the shores of the Delaware Bay, a lush prairie pothole and a tropical bird friendly coffee farm, nearly 80 species of free-flighted birds stride, paddle, tweet and fly all around", but the press release says only 56. I remember ruby-throated hummingbird and sunbittern being mentioned in the past for the coffee farm aviary, but neither are listed.

Another random thing I noticed is the press release says 56 species, but the species list provided in the fact sheet only includes 55. This seems to be because black-necked stilts were excluded from the species list, despite literally being the only species specifically mentioned in the press release for the Prairie Pothole aviary (okay they also mentioned "ducks", but that's not just one specific species!)
 
Visited the zoo and for the first time the new bird house today.

I posted photos of the new Bird House in the zoos gallery:
Smithsonian National Zoo - ZooChat


Non-Bird House:

Forgot to mention this a couple weeks ago but a puff adder is now on display in the Reptile Discovery Center.

Didn't visit the Kids Farm. Amazonia or American Trail today so if there's anything new there I'll report back tomorrow.

Bird House Info:

The Great Flight Aviary and most of the Bird Plateau (outdoor exhibits) area is still closed/under construction (as are some areas inside the building but not anything related to the aviaries). When will they open? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I didn't ask about the bird plateau exhibits, but a volunteer said the aviary wont be open for a while, and that they heard an opening date of 2027 (WTF?!?!?!). Obviously this was info from a volunteer so I'll try and find a keeper to ask tomorrow and see what they tell me because that date sounds insane? Never really mentioned why its apparently taking so long.

I mentioned the discrepancy between the species number mentioned on the exhibit page vs. the press release put out ('nearly 80' vs. 56) to a keeper (this was a while later so I had forgotten about asking about the above info) and they basically said it was about what was available and they plan on acquiring more species/increasing the population of the ones they currently have (they did point out how the coffee farm aviary was mostly migratory species and not many endemics at the moment). Not sure if this is for all the aviaries or just the coffee farm one, which is where we were at the time.

They do still have their ruby-throated hummingbird and are looking into acquiring a female and hopefully try breeding them. Will he be put on exhibit, probably not. I believe they said that after the birds were put on exhibit and they saw how they used it it was determined he was just too small. I am not the smartest person and don't know what that means so do with that as you will. They did mention possibly using him (or them if they can acquire more) in demos in the future.

General Bird House Thoughts:

Don't really want to write an entire review so I'll just share some thoughts.

Did I enjoy it? Yes, I spent a couple of hours there and I wouldn't say I'm the biggest bird person. Probably would've spent longer if I wasn't going back tomorrow. Did I find it to be a memorable exhibit? Also yes. Now its been nearly a decade since there was anything entirely new at the zoo but ignoring that I genuinely think its a memorable/unique exhibit. A lot of the birds on display could probably be seen by most visitors in their own backyards but I still had a blast trying to find all of them, and really enjoyed learning about birds that I probably took for granted before. Now I'm not the biggest zoo nerd but I also can't really think of any other major exhibit like it with a similar theme. Obviously there's outdoor yards but I really liked that all of the birds on display in the building are in walkthrough/free flight aviaries, nothing behind glass/wire or anything like that. I also really liked that the Delaware Bay and prairie pothole aviaries include underwater viewing and will now be referring to the prairie pothole viewing as a "duckquarium".

I enjoyed the few outdoor exhibits that were open but they didn't seem all that different, just cleaner. The one thing that I didn't like is that the exit is located in the prairie pothole aviary, which is the 2nd aviary, so you have to backtrack from the coffee farm aviary in order to leave.

Sorry for the long post but even though I don't enjoy writing reviews I thought I should share some of the thoughts I had about it.
 
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Andrew_NZP said:
Bird House Info:

The Great Flight Aviary and most of the Bird Plateau (outdoor exhibits) area is still closed/under construction (as are some areas inside the building but not anything related to the aviaries). When will they open? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I didn't ask about the bird plateau exhibits, but a volunteer said the aviary wont be open for a while, and that they heard an opening date of 2027 (WTF?!?!?!). Obviously this was info from a volunteer so I'll try and find a keeper to ask tomorrow and see what they tell me because that date sounds insane? Never really mentioned why its apparently taking so long.
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So I asked a keeper about this today and just like the volunteer yesterday they said they had also heard an opening of 2027 (not official though, so could be earlier or even later). Once work started they ran into some issues (the structure apparently has something called "concrete cancer") and it turned out to be a lot more extensive then they thought. The rest of the bird plateau exhibits will not be taking anywhere near that long, though they didn't have a confident timeframe as to when they would open.
 
Andrew_NZP said:
So I asked a keeper about this today and just like the volunteer yesterday they said they had also heard an opening of 2027 (not official though, so could be earlier or even later). Once work started they ran into some issues (the structure apparently has something called "concrete cancer") and it turned out to be a lot more extensive then they thought. The rest of the bird plateau exhibits will not be taking anywhere near that long, though they didn't have a confident timeframe as to when they would open.
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Do you know if there are any bird exhibits planned for out front of Bird Plateau, just passed the bridge? I think that was all supposed to be landscaped gardens and a water feature perhaps?

The Great Flight Cage doesn't surprise me one bit - although it is surprising it's taking three more years to address?! It was in poor shape years ago when it was closed and was an incredibly disappointing exhibit. I remember steep grades, crowded stairwells and paths, lackluster water features, and a poor menagerie of birds.
 
NAIB Volunteer said:
Do you know if there are any bird exhibits planned for out front of Bird Plateau, just passed the bridge? I think that was all supposed to be landscaped gardens and a water feature perhaps?
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Its mostly just gardens and greenspace currently. There was a path through the gardens but that was closed off.

"As visitors approach the Bird House, they are greeted by the Plateau Gardens, a green space abundant with native trees, bushes and flowers. The promenade serves as a model for planting bird-friendly gardens, which offer food and shelter for birds, insects and other local wildlife. Native plant species at the Plateau Gardens include downy serviceberry trees, eastern redbud trees, red-twig dogwood trees, highbush blueberry bushes and purple coneflowers, among others."

Bird House Reopens at Smithsonian’s National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute

Besides that the outside area looks like this basically:
Bird House - Entrance Area

Bird House - Entrance Area

  • Media owner Andrew_NZP
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March 5th, 2023

The little path you see is where the old column capital (Bird House - Artwork - ZooChat) is located, and where I believe there was once a cage attached to the building is now outside space that looked like it was attached to the classroom in the building.

Besides that the eagle sculpture is exactly where I remember it being and the outside exhibit lineup currently looks like this:

  1. Barred Owl exhibit
  2. Mixed Species exhibit: Sandhill Crane, Standard Bronze Turkey, Ross's Goose, American Black Duck*
  3. Whooping Crane Exhibit
  4. empty exhibit
  5. exhibit with unsigned ducks
  6. Kori Bustard exhibit (on the other side of the path from the other exhibits, where it was before)
Then the path is blocked off and this is what you'd see:
aLIQY94.jpg


*American black duck was signed, but I don't remember actually seeing any.
 
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