Stolen Montserrat orioles are back

This video from England says about itself:

Training the Montserrat Orioles in ‘Rainforest Life’

12 September 2012

The critically endangered Montserrat Orioles can be seen in the Rainforest Bio, ZSL London Zoo.

Another video from England used to say about itself:

Three small clips of birds at London zoo.

My favourite birds here are the little hooded pitta. They look like little bandits on a rescue mission.

The rarest species in these clips is the Montserrat oriole. They only live on the tiny island of Montserrat, and are Critically endangered.

The other bird in these clips is the beautiful wood hoopoe. The complexity of the colours in its plumage are too hard to describe!

Translated from Dutch news agency ANP:

Stolen rare birds are back in Avifauna

29 September 2009

ALPHEN AAN DEN RIJN – The rare Montserrat oriole couple which had been stolen nearly two weeks ago from bird park Avifauna in Alphen aan den Rijn, are back.

A man who, according to a park spokesperson, had bought them in good faith, got suspicious after reading in the media about the theft. ‘When he bought them, he did not know which birds they were’, the spokesman said on Tuesday. The man also brought back four other birds, which ‘were not as irreplaceable’. He said about five hundred Montserrat orioles are still alive in the wild, and fifty live in zoos worldwide.

During the theft, about twenty birds [of various species] disappeared, so most of them are not back yet.

Update 2012: young Montserrat oriole born in Alphen.

Aided by recent advances in technology, scientists have discovered new populations of several seriously imperiled species: here.

Bullock’s Oriole Icterus bullockii: here.

St Lucia oriole: here.

Bahama Oriole on the edge: The recently recognised Bahama Oriole is one of the rarest birds in the Caribbean: here.

A previous BirdLife Community Blog highlighted the threat posed by feral livestock to the Centre Hills on Montserrat and actions being taken by the Darwin Initiative funded project ‘Reducing the impact of feral livestock in and around the Centre Hills’ to tackle this: here.

Documenting new seabird-colony Important Bird Areas, finding previously undocumented colonies and colonies thought to be extirpated: these are just some of the exciting discoveries reported within Environmental Protection in the Caribbean’s (EPIC’s) ground-breaking Seabird Breeding Atlas of the Lesser Antilles: here.