Abstract
The modern trend in ambience for luxury hotels is beginning to run to aviaries. We notice more and more hotels and shopping malls using large aviaries to lend a more beautiful and decorative touch to the standard potted palms and other plantings. In these aviaries budgies are being replaced with more expensive and exotic birds.
On a recent trip to the South Pacific I was privileged to visit and photograph perhaps the most extensive hotel aviary in the world. This was in the new Ambassador Hotel in Bangkok, Thailand. Aviaries on all three lower floors and a huge flight cage in the center attest to the interest in birds of the owners and the hotel's manager, Mr. Wiig.
Roomy outside cages line one side of the approach to the hotel from Sukhumvit, one of Bangkok's main streets. These contain a big assortment of rare birds-five kinds of macaws, including hyacinths; several pairs of eclectus parrots; palm cockatoos and vulrurine parrots from New Guinea; ariel, greenbill and Swainsons toucans from South America; emerald toucanets and aracaries from Central America, and other birds. On the other side about 15 flamingos are wading in a pool.
On first, second, and third floors many aviary cages are located, and macaws and cockatoos are seated on perches outside the roof garden. Everything is clean and attractive. The three-story flight cage in the center of the hotel contains at least a dozen touracos from Africa running around on the tree branches or flying across the space. Besides the touracos running around, I saw fairy bluebirds from Thailand flying, woodpeckers pecking, crowned cranes stalking around, and gouras and Victoria crowned pigeons on the ground.
This extensive use of birds and aviaries attests to the love the Dutch and Thais have for our favorite type of wildlife. I should like to see the trend grow here in Arnerica.