Have you spotted our new arrivals in our Tropical Halls?

Meet our Cinnamon Ground Doves and our Red-Whiskered Bulbuls!

Cinnamon Ground Doves:

- Found in Papua New Guinea, these adorable doves spend their day foraging through the leaf-litter for insects, fallen fruits and seeds.

- Their call is a deep, warbling trill, getting lower and softer at the end - sounding a lot like a purr.

- During courtship, male doves will impress the ladies by purring away and spreading his wings towards her. If the female likes what she sees, she will engage in a sort of courtship 'dance' where she will lock beaks with him and spin round in circles. This often stimulates a sort of seed regurgitation in the male, which they will both eat, and would be a mechanism for provisioning the chicks. This will then be followed by mating.

- As with many doves and pigeons, these guys are not great at nest building. They lay a single egg, which they incubate for 16 days.

Red-Whiskered Bulbuls:

- This songbird is native to Asia, but it has been introduced to many areas across the world where there are now existing populations e.g. Florida and Sydney.

- These cute birds have a loud three or four note call and feed on fruits and small insects and perches conspicuously on trees.

- Threatened by the Asian Songbird Crisis, these birds are often captured from the wild for the Asian Songbird pet trade. Whilst this species does still have a large (but declining) population in the wild, many other species of bulbul (and other Asian Songbirds) face extinction from this very problem.