I visited Avilon Zoo in the last week of  September 2008 having read about it’s collection from the DENR list of birds I discovered while researching my Where are all the finches post. I accompanied a visiting Belgian aviculturist whose main interest is pigeons (native and other species types).   While there we met the Curator of birds, Mr Jiame Macapagal, who showed us around.   The zoo itself is a private business owned by Mr Joaquin (Jake) Gaw and some of the animals bred at the zoo are sold at the zoo or at his pet-shop in Tiendesitas at Ortegas. Unfortunately during my visit the Zoo’s keeper was not there and I didn’t get to see the breeding facilities but as Mr Magapagal explained there wasn’t much in the way of finches to see.

At present the Avilon finch collection consists of single male specimens of the pin-tailed and paradise whydah, a canary,  bishop weaver, cut-throat, red-faced Gouldian, shaft-tail, yellow-faced star, green singer (an African relative of the canary but it’s incorrectly labelled), and many zebra finches as well as munias: Java sparrows,  spice finches (scaly breasted munia), chestnut munia, white bellied munias.  Their parrot collection is much more impressive but this is a finch Blog so I’ll leave them alone.

Their display cages are all wire-bar types; varying from small 60cm cubes to large 2X3m flights.  The photo to the left shows Mr Macapagal showing off one of the finchs display cages.  The cage bases are all covered in clean river sand and there are only occasional nest-boxes provided and no nesting material.  Dry seed is the only food given to the birds on display but I’m sure that in the breeding facility that other food and supplements would be on offer as they have no shortage of pellets, fruit and supplements for their insectivorous and frugivorous birds.  No greens, half-ripe or soaked seed are given but they do give sprays of dried mature fox-tail millet.  Their seed mix is fairly standard so there are no trade-secrets to give away.  The density of munias in their cages is a problem if they ever wanted to breed but with large number available to start with picking compatible pairs should be easy - should they want to try.

I was interested to learn that last year (2007) Avilon had 3 pair of red-eared parrot-finches (from Mindanao) but they died with in a few months -allegedly they were attacked by ants. I know that ants can be a problem for young or sick birds in my aviary.  Interestingly none of the 125 Luzon sourced  green-faced parrot finches that are amongst their holdings in 2006 are alive (See DENR site) .  Mr Macapagal told me that none of the parrot-finches had ever bred, many were predated by snakes or rats and many became sick and died for no reason.  I can only speculate as the their sickness, as hygiene is very good so I suspect that it was diet-related.  With the exception of the Gouldian, all parrot finches have a requirement for fruit and insect fare and given the shy disposition of wild caught birds, the bare wire-bar cages used by Avilon would have kept the birds in a constant state of stress.  As experience has shown me here in Laguna you need to have mesh <6mm or mice and snakes will get in an disturb or predate captive birds. 

While Avilon has an interesting range of birds their aviary design and furnishing is causing them problems so I hope that they are able to improve things.  The collection is purely for exhibit at present and this is a shame as Mr Gaw obviously spends a lot of money to import lines that aren’t available in the Philippines but with more careful selection and husbandry he could maintain populations and sell to people like us.  Teena Gaw (the owners wife) has subsequently sent me an email telling me that the Gouldians were her idea and that the Zoo would might accept help to bring it’s finches up to scratch.  I hope that all Philippine keepers can help as my experience is limited to small number of species. Obviously specialised nest parasites like whydahs are beyond most people but targeted introductions of easier species like painted fire-tails or blue-faced parrot-finches could be a great boon to the Philippine avicultural industry and to the Zoo.  To develop the zoo’s conservation credentials, a better targeted use of resources to develop infrastructure and expertise  could avoid problems like the tragic loss of all those parrot-finches.  Establishing population of blue-faced or red-faced parrot-finches would give them enough experience to take on more difficult birds like the Philippine parrot-finches.

 In all, Avilon is a good place to visit if you like to see finches but there aren’t any secrets to find there yet for experienced keepers and breeders.  Improving the road to the zoo might help with their bottom-line as I’m sure some people might turn around when they come to the end of the sealed road as it is a bit of shocker after heavy rain.  I hope that Avilon continues to persist with finches and to improve their infrastructure and expertise to make the zoo a truely great place.