KEY Magazine Fort Worth

New Zoo Exhibit Offers Bird’s Eye View
By Don Patterson

Wish you could fly with the birds? You can come close by visiting the Fort Worth Zoo’s newest addition, Parrot Paradise. The exhibit, where birds are free to fly about in an interactive aviary, features six species of lorikeets – small, exotic, colorful parrots from New Guinea, Australia and the South Pacific. It is also home to flocks of cockatiels and parakeets that join the free-for-all fun in a soaring, feeding frenzy. Visitors, whether youngsters or adults, act as food servers for several hundreds of these colorful aviary hosts. The birds perch on visitor’s arms, heads and shoulders as they feed them with nectar and seed that can be purchased outside the exhibit. The lorikeets are known as brush-tongued parrots with tongues specially adapted to extract nectar and pollen from flowers. As the lorikeets feed, visitors might feel the birds’ unique tongues stroke their fingers. The parakeets eat seeds that are mounted on the ends of small hand held sticks. All the birds have been raised and trained in captivity, so are comfortable with people and aren’t at all shy when feeding.

Parrot Paradise is a gift provided by Sewell Lexus of Fort Worth, a local automobile dealership that partnered with the zoo in its construction. Previous to erecting the aviary, the exhibit served respectively as a monkey apartment home, a sea lion pool, a home to small South American mammals, a stork and crane sanctuary and finally as an alligator exhibit. Its transformation into Parrot Paradise provides visitors of all ages with a close-up personal view of the exciting and entertaining bird species. The popular hands-on exhibit is another reason why the Fort Worth Zoo has been repeatedly acclaimed as one of the finest zoos in the nation.

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