How new bird show hopes to help endangered flyers

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Jimmy, who is tall with faint grey stubble and short dark hair stands in a field holding a large brown eagle with a white head and yellow beak. Anna, who has blond hair, is standing smiling beside him.

ByDuncan Leatherdale

Reporting fromin Bishop Auckland

Exotic and endangered birds from across the world have found a new home in County Durham as part of a history-inspired theme park. Curators hope they can be used to help save their cousins in the wild.

When customs officers at Heathrow developed a giggling problem, they called Jimmy Robinson.

After intercepting an illegal shipment of pink-breasted cockatoos from Australia, they needed to find the birds a new home.

Thankfully, Jimmy knew of a nest being built on the outskirts of Bishop Auckland which would happily take in the giggle of galahs, alongside its impending parliament of owls and pandemonium of parrots.

He and his team have spent three years planning and developing The Lost Feather, one of five new shows launching at the Kynren site in July.

While the other performances focus on vikings, Victorians and legendary worms, and the main evening spectacle An Epic Tale of England, which began in 2016, tries to encompass most of history, Jimmy's bit is all about the birds.

A man in a brown tunic stands with six pink-crested cockatoos, also known as galahs, circling in the air around him. They have very pink chests and heads with grey wings.

It takes place within an open-air arena which not only resembles a giant bird nest but is also actually being used as one - swallows moved into the rafters within days of its completion.

Jimmy, Kynren's birds and conservation curator, and his 16-strong team care for 170 birds housed year-round in aviaries and enclosed orchards behind the 2,500-seat theatre.

There are 35 species, ranging from ravens to cranes, falcons to storks.

Among the attraction's residents are Ariadne and Arkas, a pair of enormous Steller's sea eagles normally found in Russia and Japan.

Ariadne is such a fan of the fireworks that close out the evening show, her aviary has been specially positioned to give her a full view.

A blurry group of people walk into an arena, the outside of which resembles a giant bird nest formed of a mishmash of large wooden sticks.

The two blue and yellow macaws, Peanuts and Coco, welcome staff with an "all right" and bid them "goodbye", while the galahs chatter incessantly in their enclosure.

Most of the birds have come from other zoos and private collections in the UK and Europe and have been highly trained through positive reinforcement to fly in shows.

Each is fitted with a tracker so they can easily be found if they venture beyond the Kynren site, with a peregrine falcon recently making an excursion to Spennymoor.

The birds have been carefully chosen to be "meaningful" to people and because they are "really culturally and historically, significant creatures that we share the planet with", Jimmy says.

Two keepers, one a man and the other a woman, wearing Tudor-style brown tunics and white shirts, hand a pair of blue and yellow macaws to each other.

"They're not here just for people to look at," he says, with the show aiming to "tell a story about why humans are fascinated with birds".

Visitors should feel a "connection" to the birds, Jimmy says, returning to the days of being woken by the dawn chorus.

"The ideal goal would be to inspire people to work in conservation, but if one person leaves this arena and wants to help birds in their back garden, we've achieved our mission."

A large brown eagle with white specks on his feathers stretching its wings. It has a large yellow beak

While such shows can be controversial among animal activists, using the attraction to help wild birds is a key part of Jimmy's ethos.

He and his team are already preparing breeding programmes for the critically endangered African white-backed vultures and endangered African grey crowned cranes.

The much-maligned vultures are among Jimmy's favourite birds.

"They are essential to eco-systems", he says, detailing how as scavengers they remove tonnes of waste on a "phenomenal scale".

"If we lose vultures we lose a vital ecological role, and that has devastating effects," Jimmy says.

A large vulture swoops across a crowd of people watching from the stands. The bird has long brown and white feather and a black head.

A pair of large cranes fly by a cascading waterfall. The birds have black chests and large white wings with black and brown edges, and large yellow crests on their black heads.

A captive population to breed from could be the "last lifeline" for them, he says, with Kynren connecting with other programmes to increase diversity and "help birds in the wild".

Jimmy and his team are also partnering with the Hampshire-based Hawk Conservancy Trust to "try and work out" why kestrels in the North East are declining and "how we can help reverse that".

From autumn, the project will also be aiming to offer "real estate" for wild barn, tawny and little owls, with nest boxes at the Bishop Auckland site and spots from Northumberland down to North Yorkshire.

"We give them places to nest and we monitor the youngsters," Jimmy says. "Then we help to encourage the environments they live in as a more stable place for them."

A team of volunteers has also been trained to carry out spring and autumn field surveys across the area to record how wild birds are faring.

A large grey owl swoops across a crowd of people sitting in the stands.

Back at Kynren, the Lost Feather's birds are fed with food from zoo suppliers and flown daily for "enrichment and exercise".

They will be kept "snug and warm" in the site's aviaries over the winter months when the attraction is closed, with Jimmy likening his role to the "ultimate hotel service for birds".

"My job is to make sure their rooms have been made when they return after flying," he says.