Avian Avenue will be open daily from Memorial Day weekend through Labor Day weekend.
Get up close and personal with our birds from around the world on Avian Avenue. This marvelous experience provides you with the opportunity to stand nose to beak while gaining a new appreciation for some of the most remarkable animals on the planet. Walk through our Avian Avenue and stop to chat with each our keepers for a causal, personalized experience at each stop where you’ll learn about each bird from our bird department and have an opportunity to ask questions. You may even get the opportunity to pet a pigeon or let them walk on your shoulder!
At Avian Avenue we are bringing the behind the scenes forward and taking bird watching to a whole new level! While you’ll get to spend as much time as you desire watching a bird’s mannerisms and learning about the birds, you can also participate in keeping our birds stimulated and happy. Help us make toys for our birds by using cardboard, cereal boxes, newspaper, and other materials that are safe for our birds, yet are really great at challenging the bird to utilize their natural skills. Once the toy is made, our bird handlers hide a treat in the toy, like bird seed, nuts, or meat and then you can watch them rip the toy to shreds and enjoy their reward.
That’s not all, get ready to watch us prep their food by weighing the food, preparing the meat for our carnivorous birds and finally the most fascinating part, watching the birds eat.
Bird Fun Facts
- Birds have their own personalities and are affectionate in their own way. They can be sassy, moody and they love to lounge around.
- Some birds, like a parrot can mimic human speech, or a two-year-old throwing a screaming tantrum.
- One of our parrots can scream as loud as fireworks! OUCH!
- A bird's feathers usually weigh more than its skeleton does - their bones are honeycombed and mostly hollow, but are structurally strong.
- Owls are known for producing pellets, which are compressed packets of fur and bone they are unable to digest. What you might not know is that other raptors also produce pellets! However, their pellets are a bit less interesting as most of the bones are digested away, leaving mostly fur and feathers.
- You’d have to be pretty hungry to try to hunt and eat a rattlesnake, but red-tailed hawks have a strategy: they spread their wings, which increases the chance that the rattler will strike harmlessly at their feathers. If the rattler does lunge, it exposes itself and the hawk has a chance to seize and disable the snake.
