Perth Zoo using National Bird Day to educate people about plight of black cockatoos

January 5th, 2018, 01:30PMWritten by Aaron Corlett Southern Gazette

NEWS

PERTH Zoo is doing what it can to educate the public about the plight of black cockatoos.

Two of the hand-raised birds at the zoo who are used for educational purposes are Vic the Forest Red-tailed Black Cockatoo and Pepe the Baudin’s Cockatoo.

Speaking during National Bird Day on January 5, keeper Emily Trainer said Vic and Pepe were ambassador birds who gave the public the chance to learn about the species.

“We have school groups that come in to learn about black cockatoos with Vic and Pepe, they fly around and have health checks too,” she said.

“The zoo is hoping to spread the message that these birds are endangered and for more people to learn about them.”

Ms Trainer said the zoo had been running operative conditioning work to keep them mentally and physically healthy.

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Badly burned cockatoo given new feathers with superglue and matchsticks

Endangered Carnaby’s cockatoo treated by vets at Perth Zoo after it was badly burnt on a power line

 

Calla Wahlquist

Friday 7 April 2017 03.26 BST Last modified on Friday 7 April 2017 04.22 BST 

Vets at Perth zoo have used matchsticks and glue to replace the flight feathers of a Carnaby’s cockatoo which was badly injured after it was burned on a power line.

Using a syringe to coat the donor feathers with superglue and a matchstick to shape the quill, vets replaced the juvenile bird’s feathers and cut away the burnt remains in an effort to help it fly again.

The bird, which is an endangered species, was taken to the zoo’s vet hospital late last month. After a week recuperating and gaining weight, it was deemed fit enough to undergo surgery on Monday.

 “This little guy was unfortunately burned when the bird sitting next to him exploded on power lines, so we needed to replace his feathers,” said a vet, Peter Ricci. “He’s faring quite well, he is a young bird so he is eating quite well and he’s begging for food so he has made some great improvements so far.

“Just to think, that poor little baby would have been sitting on that power line next to his mum or his dad and that bird unfortunately has gone up in flames and passed away as well,” he said. 

The procedure to replace the feathers is called “imping”, something Ricci said was fairly common on domestic birds whose wings had been trimmed too short, and on wild birds of prey with damaged flight feathers.

“It’s a pretty basic procedure,” he said. “We use pretty basic tools – just matchsticks and superglue, really. The trick is to get the right feather in the right place and the right angles before the glue dries so there’s a little bit of tricky work to getting the features in place but it’s not rocket science overall.”

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Rare parrots introduced to Perth Zoo

Melissa Leo

With hopes of including them in a trial captive breeding program, two rare Western Ground Parrots received a thorough health check at Perth Zoo this morning.

A male and juvenile female were placed under anaesthetic before being weighed, X-rayed, micro-chipped and having DNA samples taken.

Matt Ricci, a Senior Australian Fauna Keeper from the zoo, teamed up with Parks and Wildlife scientists to transfer the two birds from Cape Arid National Park last month. They were captured just before fire devastated the area.

“We actually had fire the day after we were able to capture the male, they had to evacuate the park the same day the male arrived,” Mr Ricci said.

“The female had been caught about two days earlier.”

Bush fires during October and November destroyed 90 per cent of the critically endangered birds’ habitat.

Before the recent fires there were less than 140 Western Ground Parrots estimated in the wild.

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Secretive parrot under Perth Zoo surveillance

Perth Zoo's most recent arrivals are so secretive their keepers are using an elaborate CCTV set-up to figure out what they eat, with the bigger goal of breeding the rare birds.

The Western ground parrot, one of only five ground-dwelling parrots in the world, is on the brink of extinction with fewer than 140 believed to be left in the wild.

Three weeks ago, seven of the birds were transferred from a secluded enclosure on Western Australia's south coast, where they were being studied, to Perth Zoo.

Australian wildlife supervisor Arthur Ferguson said the parrots were highly active in "the twilight zone" before staff were on site but were otherwise very shy, so keepers relied heavily on CCTV to monitor the birds' behaviour.

"So little is known about ground parrots we're having to figure out a lot about them as we go," Mr Ferguson said.

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