Bird Kingdom

What's a Bird Kingdom doing in Niagara Falls? Providing fun and education!

It’s not a Dadaist riddle. It’s the Bird Kingdom, the Niagara Falls aviary.

Featuring seventy different species, Niagara’s biggest nest is a diverse community providing shelter to birds as exotic as touracos and as common as bats. The building has been divided into three neighbourhoods: one for small songbirds, another for night birds like owls and bats, and the third – and most stunning – a multi-level space designed to replicate a tropical rainforest.

Here in a lush green setting surrounding a mini-Niagara waterfalls, you can witness the swoop of prehistoric-looking hornbills as they soar through the tops of palm trees, or laugh at the playful wrestling of toucans on a hot tile roof.

The total number of birds on view is 400. Most were bred in Europe and a few came directly from the jungles of Southeast Asia. In gathering the collection, the aviary has tried to acquire couples, with the intention of breeding their own birds eventually.

Ensuring a healthy diet for all of the birds is one of the most challenging responsibilities of the curator and the keepers employed by the aviary. The task is more complex than you might imagine. In the wild, most of these birds eat a balanced if sporadic diet, feeding off fruit, insects and seeds whenever they’re available. Here in the aviary, the birds have plenty of fruit, but get protein-rich insects mainly as treats. As a compromise, the curator has devised a substitute diet -- a mixture, crumbly and moist in nature, consisting of bits of hamburger, scrambled egg, soybean meal and fruits like apple and grape, etc.

Although the aviary is primarily a place to enjoy beautiful birds, it's an educational tool as well. We all know about the destruction of the rainforests and the threats this poses to the planet, but if we’ve never been to the tropics and seen the devastation, it’s hard to imagine what’s really at stake.

To bridge this gap, the aviary’s educational programs for school groups are designed to raise awareness about the rainforest and the environment in general, including recycling, something the rainforest has been doing naturally for generations.

The aviary shows us the beauty of nature and what we stand to lose if we’re not careful.

Visitor Information

Bird Kingdom, 5651 River Road, Niagara Falls, Ontario, L2E 7M7, Canada

Phone: 1.905.356.8888

Toll Free: 1.866.994.0090

SAVE MONEY

Save $2 off your aviary visit by printing out a coupon from www.saveabuck.ca

Looking for more Niagara Falls Canada Coupons? You can also find coupons for Marineland Niagara Falls, IMAX Niagara Falls and other Niagara Falls attractions at my Coupons page.

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