Our aim is to foster an appreciation of the birds we work with - and to serve as a centre for biological study, education and conservation.
Today the Aviary is home to a specialised collection of fruit and insect-eating species of soft-bill birds. We also have a few rare species of pigeons, doves and partridges. Wherever we can, we make sure there is real conservation value to the work we do.
We are very proud of our own captive breeding programme. We also support conservation in the wild. One such project includes a field study and conservation management in Jianxi Province in south eastern China, led by Professor He Fen-qi from the institute of Zoology in Beijing, for the critically endangered Blue-crowned Laughingthrush. We have provided a GPS set so that nest sites and sightings can be pinpointed accurately on a map, and also recording equipment so that the songs and calls can be recorded and trialled in nearby areas. Hopefully this will help find further populations of the Blue-crowned Laughingthrush.
We also support the captive breeding programme on Java at Cikananga Wildlife Rescue Centre, for the extremely rare Black and White Laughingthrush from Sumatra. In 2005, possibly for the first time in the world in captivity, we bred this bird at Waddesdon.
