Our facility consists of a 2300 sq ft building on just under two acres of land in a rural area near Raleigh, NC. The lower level houses the main housing areas, known as the “Main Bird Room” or “B1” and the “Linda Shapin Little Birds Haven” or “B2”.
Our smaller residents enjoy browsing on greens inside their walk-in flight cage.
The upper level houses our quarantine area. The lower and upper levels have separate air handling systems for better bio-security.
There is also a kitchen area for food preparation, and a bird-safe free-flight room we affectionately call “The Playroom”. This is where the birds get to spend time out of their cages and socialize in groups.
The “Playroom” – where the birds get to spent time out of their cages and socialize with others.
We originally began construction on a 12′ x 44′ aviary to the south of the main building. It consists of a Carolina Carport structure on top of a 2′ foundation wall that sits on a 2′ deep concrete footer. When complete, it will be a hybrid of greenhouse and aviary, with the greenhouse portion enclosed in polycarbonate walls and heated in inclement weather. The portion shown with the roof above it is the 20′ that will be enclosed in polycarbonate. The remaining 24′ with no roof will be enclosed in 0.5″ x 0.5″ wire mesh. The floor in both areas will be natural ground covered in natural and untreated chipped hardwood mulch, so that trees and plants can grow. This design was developed by Matt Smith of Project Perry (The Central Virginia Parrot Sanctuary) and has proved to be a safe and natural environment for the birds to thrive year-round as a flighted flock.
Sadly, this was an extremely expensive project, and raising funds proved very difficult. Of the money spent constructing it, less than a third was raised from donors. We continued to move forward using our own funds in an effort to achieve this goal. We finally purchased the polycarbonate panels and all the wire mesh needed, and the pandemic hit. We went into survival mode and are still recovering from the decrease in both donations and volunteers. If you’d like to help us move towards this goal, please visit our donation page.
We also have a large storage building where we house extra cages, building materials and tools that are used to make bird toys. A detached building houses our dry food making workshop. Future plans include a full new building built to USDA standards for producing food for birds that meets the same standards as food produced for humans. This will be where we can make and sell our in-house blends of bird food, and a greenhouse for year-round greens and growing our own seedlings for the garden.