Eggciting Easter Holidays

It is an eggciting time this Easter at Bourton-on-the-Water’s Birdland, from 28 March – 12 April, with eggs under watch and cracking Easter activities planned.
Birdland has eggcellent captive breeding programmes, and families can discover the different breeding strategies that animals have adopted to survive in the avian world as well as watch Birdland’s Hatchery to see real Easter eggs hatching and the new chicks taking their first steps.
Visitors over the Easter Holidays can also meet the newest chick to hatch at Birdland. The first emu chick ever to hatch at the park is being hand-reared by keepers and is thriving. Families will enjoy meeting the dinosaur-like arrival in the Hatchery.
Keepers are also expecting more emus to hatch over the Easter period, with 7 eggs currently being looking after by the male emu in the nest.
Say hello to the cute, fluffy King Penguin Chick who is residing with its extended family in Penguin Shore, and look-out for the nesting Humboldt penguins who have laid 5 eggs so far!
Families can join in the Easter Challenge Quiz, from 3 – 12 April. Children must hunt to find ten eggs around the site and answer some ornithological questions.
All the family can learn even more eggcellent bird facts at the daily feeding talks and get to meet the Keepers who look after all the birds in the park. At the indoor Discovery Zone, visitors can meet animals that lay eggs from fish to amphibians and reptiles to mammals and even get up close in the Close Encounter zone.
Egg-tastic Facts that you may discover on a visit this Easter:
• Burrowing Owls burrow underground where several eggs will be laid, away from prying eyes.
• The Flamingos build a nest cone of mud up to a foot high to protect their single egg from flooding.
• Female pheasants make a scrape on the floor and lay up to 8 eggs which they will incubate and hope that their dull coloured plummage will help camouflage them
• Pigeons build a flimsy nest on a platform of twigs and lay 2 eggs.
• Parrots will find holes in trees in which to nest.
• Female Cassowaries are possibly one of the laziest of bird mothers, she will lay eggs in the nests of several males then leave them to incubate and rear the young.
• Possibly the most committed mother is the female Trumpeter Hornbill, she will seal herself into a cavity in a tree (or a nest box at Birdland) using mud, droppings and saliva. She will leave a narrow gap through which the male can feed her for the following three months whilst she lays eggs, incubates them and hatches the chicks. Once the chicks are full size they will then break out