Our Bird Team are always coming up with new ideas to keep the birds who call the Trust home, happy, healthy and engaged. While our display birds enjoy the freedom of choosing whether to fly in our daily demonstrations, it’s just as important to us, that they have stimulating experiences within their aviaries too. Over the last few months, Bird Team member Leainya has been taking a closer look at how we can make our enrichment even more meaningful for the birds we care for.
Enrichment is designed to encourage natural behaviours and provide mental and physical stimulation. There are five main categories of enrichment: environmental, sensory, social, cognitive and food-based. By researching the natural lifestyles and behaviours of our species, we can create activities that challenge our birds in ways they might experience in the wild. It is important that we never stop adapting, as new research is constantly helping us better understand the animals we care for.
Sherbie’s sandcastle challenge
While researching Secretarybirds, Leainya came across an interesting fact about their foraging behaviour. Although these remarkable birds are best known for using their powerful kicks to hunt snakes, they also use their feet to knock over piles of dung in search of insects hidden underneath. This discovery sparked an idea. What if we could recreate a similar challenge for Sherbie, our younger Secretarybird?
The solution was surprisingly simple: sandcastles! By building small sand structures and hiding insects inside, we could encourage Sherbie to use his natural foraging behaviours to uncover his food. It’s safe to say the idea was a success, and Sherbie now seems more than happy to get involved whenever it’s time for sandcastle construction!
A puzzle for Sirius
Other species that keep the Bird Team thinking creatively are our caracaras. These highly intelligent birds are often compared to parrots and corvids when it comes to problem-solving abilities, and so they need a constant variety of new and exciting challenges to keep their minds occupied. Finding enrichment that’s clever enough to test a caracara can be quite the task.
Taking inspiration from an enrichment activity used with meerkats, Leainya came up with a puzzle for Sirius, one of our Striated Caracaras. The design involved a leftover sweet tub, some strategically placed holes and a specially built wooden frame. Adam from our Maintenance Team took on the carpentry side of the project, and then the puzzle was ready for testing.
Loaded with insects and placed into Sirius’s aviary, the challenge began. Unsurprisingly, it didn’t take him long to work things out. After observing the puzzle, Sirius began experimenting with different techniques, first using his beak to rotate the tub. When that proved less effective, he paused, seemed to reassess the problem and then carefully used his foot instead. This worked far better, releasing some well-earned insects through the holes in the tub. Watching his trial-and-error process unfold was a fascinating reminder for Leainya of just how intelligent these birds can be. Reflecting on the experience, she said, “To this day, it still astounds me how quickly he figured out how to work something he had never seen before.”
Always Learning
The beauty of this type of enrichment is that it can evolve. By adding more tubs or reducing the number of holes, the challenge can be adjusted to ensure Sirius continues to solve new problems rather than memorising old ones.
As we continue learning more about the natural behaviours of our birds, we hope to develop even more exciting enrichment opportunities across the Trust. Research-led ideas like these help us create activities that challenge our birds both mentally and physically, keeping them stimulated while encouraging the behaviours they would naturally display in the wild.
