So many people refer to Birds of Eden as Birds of Paradise, Birds Paradise, Garden of Eden, Birds of the World and even as World of Birds. So I wondered if it would help to explain why and how Birds of Eden derived its name.
At first we were going to call our bird sanctuary Kunjani Gorge, but we changed our mind when the municipality we fall under was re-named The Eden Municipality. There was even talk of The Eden Gate way opening at the N2 Monkeyland turn-off (2km from us).
There is no bird sanctuary or bird park named Birds of Paradise, but there is a species of bird named Birds of Paradise. Birds of Paradise are members of the family Paradisaeidae and belong to the order Passeriformes. The majority of species in this family are found on the island of New Guinea and its satellites, with a few species occurring in the Moluccas and eastern Australia.
The Birds of Paradise family has forty species in 14 genera. The members of this family are perhaps best known for the plumage of the males of most species, in particular highly elongated and elaborate feathers extending from the beak, wings or head. For the most part they are confined to dense rainforest habitat.
The Birds of Paradise specie is of cultural importance to the inhabitants of New Guinea. But because of this the Birds of Paradise specie is currently threatened with extinction as result of hunting and habitat loss. The trade in skins and feathers of the Birds of Paradise bird has been going on for two thousand years! If these birds are not protected, extinction is inevitable.
The only other Birds of Paradise I could locate on the world wide web was a South African Bed-and-breakfast in Eshowe, KwaZulu Natal.
There is a bird park which features many species of caged birds in Robertson, but this is not remotely similar to Birds of Eden’s set-up. Think jungle, think gigantic dome …. place this jungle inside the dome and there you have Birds of Eden – the World’s largest free-flight (single dome) bird aviary.
The World is full of birds, over 10 000 species of birds exist in our World. It is guesstimated that over 100 billion individual birds live in this World called Earth.
In our ‘World’ at Birds of Eden we provide a free flying sanctuary (forested home) for 220 species of the World’s birds and Birds of Eden is home to more than 3500 individual birds.
The name World of Birds is also often used to describe or refer to us here at Birds of Eden. Please don’t confuse Birds Paradise (in Robertson) with Birds of Eden (Plettenberg bay), and don’t confuse us with World of Birds either. Once you have visited the 3 you will understand why you cannot compare us to these. There is simply no comparison.
World of Birds is a bird park in Houtbay near Cape Town, but their birds are in cages and ours are free. That’s the main, notable and important difference. The second is that they sell their surplus birds and are not against the trade in birds as pets. We agree with the 1st and we don’t condone the latter. We simply don’t sell our birds, instead, we curb naturally their breeding to keep numbers down.
World of Birds is the largest bird park in Africa, meaning that they have the largest amount of different species of birds. This does not mean that they are the best in the World, the biggest or most popular, this simply means that they have a large collection of different species of birds - about 400 species at present. The birds at World of Birds are however not flying about a single dome sanctuary such as we have at Birds of Eden. Instead, most of the birds at World of Birds live in individual cages or are pinioned or clipped so that they cannot fly away.
There is only one Birds of Eden, and we are based in The Crags, and it is the World’s largest single dome free flight aviary. We are located 16km east from the holiday town Plettenberg Bay, so turn off to Monkeyland and Birds of Eden from N2 S33 56' 46.09" E23 29" 8.13" or call us so that we can explain the way.
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