the indoor aviary. The outdoor aviary I had covered on top and surrounded by sound insulating glass to prevent noise pollution. We live in a row of houses, so complaints from our neighbours were to be expected otherwise…….. The birds bought in Madagascar were all coloured red-brown due to the dust of the soil over there. So it was impossible to determine the subspecies. After several weeks staying in the aviary I was able to observe that it was a mix of Coracopsis nigra nigra (nominate form) and C.n. libs.
However, breeding wild caught Lesser
Vasa Parrots without finding good information in literature in 1995 forget it! In the meantime I made contact with then Chester Zoo’s curator of birds Mr. Roger Wilkinson who was successfully breeding Lesser Vasas in a colony. So I would try so too.
Our aviary was extended to our garden, where a Group of eight Lesser Vasas had just enough space. To make this clearer: our backyard lays lower than our street in front of the house, our garden approx. is at the same level as our basement floor. So the outdoor aviary could be built against
44 BIRD SCENE
Madagascar About the four weeks during tour through Madagascar I can write a complete different article, but here I shall give limited information related to Vasa Parrots only.
Madagascar is an isle opposite to Mozambique’s coast in Africa. The size is about France + Belgium, Luxembourg and The Netherlands together and quite densely populated. In the 1990’s the country was hardly visited by any tourists and often we were an attraction ourselves for the (mostly friendly and even sometimes a little shy) local people.
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