The Houston Zoo’s famed bird collection is one of the largest in US zoos with approximately 250 species and 800 specimens. Although most birds are housed in the Bird Department proper, some species may be viewed in other areas of the Zoo, such as hoof-stock pens or the Natural Encounters building.
Entering the front plaza of the Zoo, visitors may be met by some of those harsh cries from the Green-winged, Blue-and-Gold, Military, and Red-fronted Macaws in the large cages at the entrance to the Fischer Bird Gardens. These macaws are among the largest and most colorful parrots from the New World Tropics.
On the left side of the Bird Gardens entrance, visitors can find the King Vulture. This bird is unusual among vultures for both its pale plumage and its bright orange and yellow bare head. After the condors, it is the largest vulture in the New World and ranges from Mexico to Argentina. Houston Zoo was the first US zoo to breed King Vultures in 1976 and has raised a number of these birds over the years.
Continuing along the row of cages, one may see the gregarious, animated Guira Cuckoos, from northern South America, which seem to do everything together, including nesting. They share space with a characteristic inhabitant of the Rio Grande Valley and Mexico, the Green Jay. Both these species have been raised here, and Houston Zoo cooperates with other Texas zoos in a breeding project for the Green Jay.
In the same cage is the Wattled Curassow, a large black bird related to pheasants and turkeys. The male of this species has a bright orange knob ornamenting his beak. Most species of curassow, all from tropical America, are threatened or endangered due to hunting. Our zoo is well known for its breeding and conservation efforts dedicated to these increasingly rare birds.
Proceeding around the Bird Gardens, several species of an unusual African bird family, the turacos, can be seen, for example, Hartlaub’s Turaco and Lady Ross’s Turaco. This family is characterized by the presence of two unique color pigments, one red and one green, found no where else in the animal kingdom. They are primarily fruit-eaters. Houston Zoo has concentrated on breeding turacos for the past thirty years.
One of the largest cages in the area houses a spectacular pair of Rhinoceros Hornbills from Indonesia. These large forest birds with their bizarre beak ornamentation – called a casque – have an unusual nesting strategy characteristic of the hornbill family. The female enters a tree hollow in which she is sealed up by the male, leaving only a slit through which he feeds her while she incubates the egg and rears her chick, a process taking well over two months. When the chick is large enough, she breaks out and helps the male feed the growing chick, which walls itself back in and remains for some 40 days longer until it can fly.
Leaving the Bird Gardens, turning to the right, and walking along the main path, visitors may enter the Tropical Bird House, comprising a number of glass-fronted exhibits and a large central free-flight aviary. Highlights in the first group of cages are the Blue-breasted Kingfisher, from equatorial African forests, and the Micronesian Kingfisher from the Western Pacific Marianas Islands. The subspecies from Guam is completely extinct in the wild, due to the accidental introduction of the Brown Tree Snake on that island, and survives only in captivity in a number of US zoos. Houston Zoo belongs to the Species Survival Plan (SSP) for this kingfisher and has raised a number of these birds over the years.
The largest and most conspicuous birds in the walk-through Rain Forest exhibit are undoubtedly the two male Blue-billed Curassows. This native of Colombia is one of the rarest birds in the world, and like other curassow species, its numbers have been severely reduced by hunting and loss of habitat. Due to political instability in the regions of Colombia in which it occurs, its exact wild population is uncertain, but it probably numbers no more than several hundred. Our zoo has been involved in captive breeding this species for nearly thirty years, but very few birds were originally imported and even captive numbers worldwide have now fallen dangerously low.
Among the other interesting inhabitants of the Rain Forest exhibit is a pair of Smew, a northern Eurasian diving duck. In spring breeding season, the male’s bold white and black plumage stands out in the exhibit pools.
Looking up, visitors may see a number of attractive birds high in the trees. The large grey- and iridescent-green Nicobar Pigeon with a short white tail is native to islands in the eastern Indian Ocean; the aptly-named Scarlet Ibis comes from Trinidad; and the Hawk-headed Parrot, marked by a blue-and-red neck ruff, is from Amazonian South America. One of the best songsters in the exhibit is the male White-rumped Shama, a small black and rufous bird from South-east Asia, where it is often kept as a cage-bird for singing contests. Another notable species with unusual nesting habits is the Blue-crowned Motmot, a jay-sized bird with a long racquet-tipped tail ranging from Mexico through Brazil. These birds excavate long tunnels in the ground or earth-banks for their nests, or in areas of pre-Columbian civilization, the chinks in ancient pyramids will do.
Visitors might also notice two unusual mammals on the Rain Forest floor: Rufous-and-Black Giant Elephant Shrews foraging through the leaf-litter. These squirrel-sized animals rely largely on their long flexible snouts to smell out insect prey, and their long legs permit them to run with surprising speed when startled.
Leaving the Rain Forest aviary, a visitor may see the White-bellied Go-away Bird, another member of the turaco family native to the arid acacia savannah of East Africa. This particular bird is hand-raised and tame, so he is used for presentations for guests. Across the hallway, lives a pair of Golden-headed Quetzals, native to montane forests of north-east South America. These spectacular red and iridescent green birds are rarely seen, much less bred, in captivity. Since 1985, Houston Zoo has successfully raised some twenty of these birds, and is one of the few zoos in the world to breed any member of the trogon family, to which these birds belong.
The last cage in the Tropical Bird House is the backyard bird exhibit housing native birds – for example Cardinals, Cedar Waxwings, and warblers – that have been injured and cannot be returned to the wild.
Leaving the Bird House, visitors turning right and walking alongside the building will come to the Flamingo Exhibit, housing our large flock of Chilean Flamingos. This is one of the three flamingo species found along the Andes mountain chain of western South America, and has been kept in Houston since at least the early 1970s. Flamingos are long-lived birds: the oldest bird presently at the Zoo is a wild-caught female received in 1975. The first successful flamingo nesting occurred in 1986, and the birds build their conical mud nests in spring or summer of most years. A single egg is laid, and both parents incubate their egg and raise the chick.
Crossing the bridge over the Flamingo Exhibit, visitors will see a long row of cages referred to as the Pheasant Run, although it now houses many birds besides pheasants. Strolling along the row, one may see the unusual black and scarlet Pesquet’s, or Vulturine, Parrot from New Guinea. This bird is primarily a fruit eater and the sparsely feathered facial skin helps keep the bird clean of messy fruit juice and pulp.
Of special note in this area is the Ocellated Turkey, a close relative of the North American Wild Turkey, but with a much more restricted range, confined only to Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula and adjacent Guatemala. It is also a far more colorful bird than its northern relative, with blue and orange bare skin on the head and iridescent green and coppery feathers. Like the more familiar Wild Turkey, the male performs an impressive courtship display in the spring, spreading his tail, strutting, and gobbling.
The world’s largest pigeon is also on display here: the Victoria Crowned Pigeon is one of three species of turkey-sized crowned pigeons from New Guinea. All three have grey-blue and maroon plumage with showy filigree crests. The Houston Zoo participates in the SSP for this species and has raised a number of crowned pigeons over the years.
The Pheasant Run appropriately houses one of the largest species of pheasant: the Great Argus, native to Malaysia and Borneo. Although this bird’s body size is not remarkable, the male boasts the longest wing feathers of any bird, so extremely developed for courtship display that the bird can scarcely fly. Those long feathers each are marked with a row of beautiful ocelli, or eye-spots, so that when the bird fans his wings in display to a female, the effect is dazzling.
At one end of the Pheasant Run is an open-topped yard housing an impressive and colorful Saddle-billed Stork from sub-Saharan Africa. The sexes of this species may be distinguished by eye-color: males have dark brown eyes; females, yellow.
At the other end of the Pheasant Run is a large aviary housing a variety of birds, notable among which is the Waldrapp Ibis, a critically endangered species now found only at a few sites in Morocco and the Middle East. Fortunately, it breeds well in captivity, and there are now far greater numbers of this species in Europe and North America than in the wild.
Across the walkway from the Pheasant Run flight pen is an open yard housing a pair of Red-crowned Cranes, the second-most endangered crane species (the North American Whooping Crane is the rarest). This striking bird now numbers scarcely 2000 individuals in the wild and breeds in far-eastern Russia, migrating to China and Korea. There is also a small resident population in northern-most Japan. Habitat modification is the main reason for its decline, but in some areas of China, hunting is also a danger. Fortunately, it has bred well in captivity, including here at the Houston Zoo, and its numbers in US and European collections are stable and strong.
Last but not least in the Zoo’s bird collection are the St Vincent Parrots, housed in a building across from the keeper entrance to the Pheasant Run. This is one of the largest of the so-called Amazon parrots and is endemic solely to the island of St Vincent in the eastern Caribbean, where it is the national bird. Though the wild numbers fluctuate, sometimes as a result of hurricanes or volcanic eruptions, and the species has always commanded high prices in the pet trade, its numbers in recent years have been stable at around 600. This species has been housed at the Houston Zoo since 1967, and the first zoo breeding occurred here in 1972.
