The main reason zoos and other aviaries have various quail spp in the cages
is to clean up any seeds and other bits and pieces dropped by the larger
birds above. Much of this matter would otherwise go mouldy and be wasted.
T.
inal Message-----
From: Birding-Aus On Behalf Of
Philip Veerman
Sent: Monday, 16 March 2015 2:23 PM
To: 'Paul McDonald'
Cc:
Subject: Quail and pigeons in zoos?
Interesting question. In my visits to zoos I like to take notice of what is
in the enclosures, compared to what the labels on the cages say is in the
enclosures. It is quite regular for aviaries to have parrots and other
larger birds correctly marked (or not) and yet things like King Quails are
not mentioned (they are of course the most common). As for the zoos having
information at hand, whether incomplete labels equates to that they don't
hold the information in the records in their office, is an interesting
question. To lesser extent I notice this includes Stubble Quail, sometimes
(I've seen several) Painted Button-quail and Black-breasted Button-quail and
various rails and others. Possibly these may be only temporary housing of
birds to be moved elsewhere or rehabilitated.
The advantage of captives is you know where they are. As zoos are often
noisy I wonder if asking people via the avicultural society would be better.
Most people who have an aviary with finches would have King Quails (I
certainly did - in the 1970s) and many would have the others.
Surely wild Crested Pigeons are easy to find. Plenty in my garden. They are
not loud.
Philip
-----Original Message-----
From: Birding-Aus On Behalf Of
Paul McDonald
Sent: Monday, 16 March 2015 1:02 PM
To: Birding-Aus
Subject: Quail and pigeons in zoos?
Dear all,
We're looking at recording natural call amplitude variation for a range of
quail and pigeon species for a research project. We have all the required
licenses and ethics permits. We're seeking to calibrate our automated
recorders so that we can then detect calling birds via the recordings during
surveys, but to do that we need to know how loud each species is to
calculate detection distances and probabilities. Given field populations are
scant at present and largely not calling, we thought it might be possible to
record captive birds as a work around prior to spring.
We've tried calling a few zoos to locate populations, but the species we're
interested in aren't exactly huge public draw cards, so often information on
whether or not they are being held is difficult to get. We are looking at
Crested Pigeons, either bronzewing species and any of the Australian quail
species. Does anyone know of zoos/parks that might have aviary populations
of any of these species that we can contact?
Thanks in advance,
Paul McDonald
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