Skowbo Enclosure

The Skowbo Enclosure is our main cage for medium-sized songbirds; some of the species that have practiced flying here are robins, blue jays, grackles, bluebirds, woodpeckers, grosbeaks, and starlings.

Payne Cage

The main part of the Payne Cage is 40' long, with a connecting annex adding another 16'. It has housed medium-sized raptors of many species, including red-tailed hawks and barred owls, also serving as a flight-conditioning cage for crows.

Williamson Enclosure

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FP  EL

Swift House

The Williamson Enclosure is a cage designed for pigeons: it has tall walls and high roosts to give birds opportunities for vertical flight. We admire pigeons, which comprise about 10% of our case load. The Williamson Cage is dedicated to "Martha," the last Passenger Pigeon of North America (she died at the Cincinnati Zoo in 1914).

The Stehle Cage contains a built-in graded-depth pool. Although designed for wader birds such as herons, bitterns and terns, the pool can support a gull or a duck at its deep end.

Stehle Cage

The Swift House is designed for aerial insectivores (birds that catch bugs while flying) such as swallows and chimney swifts. The artificial chimney emerging from the roof is a potential nesting and roosting site for wild swifts. The chimney extends down through the cage, creating a central obstacle around which the birds can fly laps. This feature maximizes flight exercise opportunities; swifts and swallows spend much of their lives on the wing, and should be be flawless and tireless fliers when they are released.