Take a 30-minute side trip off I-95 where a wondrous walk through aviaries featuring the world’s largest collection of waterfowl and 3,000 rare and endangered birds. Being a perch for parakeets is only the beginning of the story you will tell about it.
A neatly dressed woman reaches into a brown paper lunch sack and pulls out a popsicle stick covered with bird seed on one end. She gently extends her hand and a chartreuse parakeet lands on the stick. For the next few moments, the delighted woman becomes a parakeet perch as he happily pecks until gaining his fill of the seed. This aptly named exhibit is The Landing Zone at Sylvan Heights Bird Park in Scotland Neck, North Carolina. The woman is one of many who enter the gates of this aviary and experience the kaleidoscope of color and song as brilliant-colored birds swirl and sing above them.
Surrounded by rural farmland about 40 minutes northwest of Rocky Mount, Sylvan Heights Bird Park is a series of walk-through aviaries that draw ornithologists, school groups, and families. Bird enthusiasts and novices alike spend a good half-day exploring the 18 acres that contain the world’s largest collection of waterfowl and 3,000 rare and endangered birds from toucans and parrots to pheasants and cranes. The Landing Zone is one of several aviaries where visitors can get up close and personal to the park’s inhabitants.
Visitors to Sylvan Heights Bird Park enjoy and learn about waterfowl from around the globe, and their entry fees go to preserving the nesting birds in the Avian Breeding Center. Started in 1989, the Avian Breeding Center is the largest collection of exotic and rare waterfowl in the world and helps maintain the population of 140 species of endangered birds. More than 55,000 visitors a year come to enjoy the beautiful gardens and grounds.
Another favorite exhibit and the first visitors see when entering the park is Multinational, where visitors spy an island of flamingos so pink it’s as if they’ve invented a new hue between bubblegum and cherry blossom. The visitor center sells feed for the flamingos and ducks who mingle in the pond around the island. Bird lovers of all ages get a kick out of feeding them and hearing their loud honking calls as a thank you.
In late 2021, the Birds of Paradise aviary opened, featuring dazzling, iridescent plumed species from warmer climates around the globe. The metallic-green and blue feathers of the Nicobar Pigeon, native to the islands of southeast Asia and Oceania, is truly wondrous to behold in person. The Violet Turaco of Africa stuns with purple plumage and a red comb for a crown. Guests gawk at the Victoria Crowned Pigeon, who looks ready for a royal event with a headdress of feathers akin to the delicate white tufts of dandelion seeds.
The park offers an easy paved trail connecting several walk-through aviaries displaying birds from South America, North America, Europe, Africa, Asia, and Australia. There’s also a boardwalk that takes guests through the native wetlands of the area, a large playground for younger guests who need more than a tour of feathers to tire out, and a trail to the beaver pond.
Discover for yourself the striking, odd, glamourous, and fascinating birds at Sylvan Heights Bird Park. Which one will be your favorite? The royal blue macaw with a brilliant yellow collar? The strutting crown crane so obviously proud of his yellow headdress? The majestic green-headed wood duck? Or the squat, thick-headed laughing kookaburra? They’re all real and waiting for you at the Sylvan Heights Bird Park.