ILLINOIS AUDUBON BULLETIN 21 
THE NEW ZOO REVIEW: An Incredible 
Experiment in Bird Identification 
by RICHARD H. RYAN 
A few years ago a group of birders took a field trip to a major zoo. I 
was employed in the bird department of that zoo at the time and served 
as one of the guides for this trip. One feature of the trip was a cage 
containing 25 species of birds, all but one of which occurred locally. 
Before the arrival of the birders, we completely covered the case 
labelling the species present. We let the birders into the building 20 
minutes before it was open to the public and gave them 20 minutes to 
identify the birds in the cage. There were 21 common species, with one to 
four individuals each (e.g., Song Sparrow, Fox Sparrow, Rose-breasted 
Grosbeak, Black-and-white Warbler, Redstart, Orchard Oriole, etc.) and 
three rare ones — Western Tanager, Dickcissel, and Wheatear, plus a 
“ringer” we had slipped in from an adjacent cage. It was an African bird, 
an eclipse plumage Jackson’s Whydah, which was selected because it was 
quite nondescript and it would be interesting to see what it might be 
called. 
There were 15 birders of whom ten were beginners or at best 
novices, and about five who were established birders with reputations for 
competence and reliability. None could be considered real “aces,” how- 
ever. Playing slightly unfair, no warning was given of the presence of the 
exotic, and the birders were told that all were species that occurred 
locally. No figure was given on how many species were present. 
The cage was eighteen feet long, seven-and-a-half feet high, and 
seven feet deep. The guardrail was about two-and-a-half feet from the 
cage, so no bird could get more than twelve feet from the observer. The 
front three feet were unplanted, and rear and corners had some short 
two- to three-foot shrubs and quite a few dead trees with many branches, 
some of which were draped with plastic ivy. In general, there was 
moderate cover. The light was good and the birds were accustomed to 
crowds, so none were cowering in the background. There was room to 
step back a few feet and focus binoculars, and most birders at least tried 
that. Some of the birds had faded in color, especially reds and yellows, 
but all were still within the normal color variation found in the field. 
