Smithsonian National Zoo’s New Bird House Highlights Migratory Birds’ Incredible Journeys

This new approach is vastly different from earlier incarnations of the Bird House, which opened in 1928 and for decades displayed exotic birds from “Africa, Australia, Asia—anywhere but North America,” Sara Hallager, the zoo’s curator of birds, tells Mental Floss. When the time came to give the Bird House a long-overdue revamp in the early 2000s, curators wanted to modernize the exhibits to reflect migration and the importance of ecosystem conservation. “It was this idea that birds of North America, our birds, our national treasures, are in huge trouble, and nobody really knows about it,” Hallager says.