Zoodoo Zoo recently wel­comed some new residents, after a successful breeding season for their critically en­dangered swift parrots. This season the zoo’s colony has grown from six to ten, with four chicks fledging success­fully from two different nests.

Swift parrots breed in Tas­mania in spring and summer and migrate to mainland Australia for the winter. It’s estimated that there are less than 1000 of these birds re­maining in the wild – perhaps as few as 300.

The birds face multiple threats, with loss of habitat to logging the biggest threat to their survival.

Successfully breeding the critically endangered swift parrots at Zoodoo is a pos­itive step forward for this species. Zoodoo aims to build a Swift Parrot Conservation Breeding Centre to ensure ongoing conservation breed­ing of this species and to support any state and federal led conservation programs.

For the last two years, Zoodoo has provided daily keeper talks on swift parrots to raise awareness of these birds and the dire situation they are facing. Working with Birdlife Australia, Zoodoo has developed interpretive graphics to help visitors distinguish the birds from similar species and encour­age participation in citizen science by providing contacts for reporting swift parrot sightings. Zoodoo is open daily from 9am to 5pm, with the swift parrot talk held at 11:30am every day.