New Avairy for Northern Carmine Bee-eaters at Boscia

Building of a special avairy for the pair of Northern Carmine Bee-eaters we acquired in July 2009 has started a week ago and hope to have it finished within the next two weeks. The avairy is just over six meters wide by five meters long and will be 2.4 meters high.

In the one corner of the avairy will be a small dam and above it an artifical sand wall in which pipes with nest boxes will be positioned at various positions to act as nesting sites. The paper written on the nest boxes at Animal Kingdom at Disney in Orlando, Florida, USA, was of great help and we hope to replicate their success with breeding this species.

Bester birds imported five pairs about a year ago and we managed to secure one pair. The other four were allready booked for a collector in Malelane, Mpumalanga. We have spoken to Mike Bester about the possibility of importing more birds and we are hoping to get at least another pair soon.

The Northern Carmine Bee-eaters will share their cage with a pair of Bruce’s Green Pigeons and a pair of Roul-roul Partridges that we got recently.

Updates on the progress on the avairy will be posted regularly.