Animal Diaries Archive

Fly away home!

24 November 2006

What a hectic week it has been! We have been very busy supplying numerous birds to the film set and also having the unenviable task of retrieving birds that got a little lost during the show. This particular aspect has not happened to us before out of the show. Yeah, the odd bird goes astray during a training session, but it is a part of learning to be a bird and coping with the aspects of being out of their comfort zone.

Unfortunately during one of our shows this week, we experienced a rather large amount of feedback through our speaker system from an unknown outside source. This sound amplified out through all of the speakers in the Crocoseum, and was definitely quite loud. It only lasted a few seconds, but it was enough of a noise to give the birds a good shock, and most of the cockatoos took flight out of the Crocoseum. We endeavour as much a possible to give the birds as many good experiences in the Crocoseum as possible, but sometimes these little bad experiences happen and we have to collect those that get a shock and hopefully they learn form it as well.

Fortunately for us, all but two of the birds that took off had radio transmitters attached to them, and it was simply a matter of locating them and calling them back.Two Major Mitchells, however, chew their transmitters so they don’t wear them. They were missing in action for approximately five hours and we had no idea where they went. Every day we learn more about how intelligent these birds are, as on this particular day it was 5:00pm and I was just about to do the last drive around the local area to try to locate them when I heard them flying towards us. They flew back over the Zoo, circled around their aviary and returned home. An absolutely amazing sense of direction and location.

The day ended with all birds back safe and sound in their homes, looking forward to a day off before getting back on the horse and flying in the show the following day.