Birdworld is celebrating its latest conservation success, centred around one of the world’s most elusive and endangered little songbirds. The UK’s largest bird park, home to more than 1,000 birds across 181 species, has successfully bred a number of Chestnut-backed Thrush chicks – tiny, forest-dwelling songbirds weighing less than 50g. Native to Indonesia, the Chestnut-backed Thrush (Geokichla dohertyi) is already extinct on the island of Lombok (just east of Bali) and is becoming increasingly rare across the southern Lesser Sunda Islands, where habitat loss, illegal trapping for the songbird trade, and introduced predators have put intense pressure on dwindling populations.
