Sylvan Heights Bird Park – Scotland Neck, NC

A few weeks ago we finished up all of our homeschool groups for the year so I decided that during the month of April (and maybe part of May) we’ll be taking as many field trips as possible. My hope is to take at least 1 a week (depending on the weather and other commitments).

We started off at Sylvan Heights Bird Park in Scotland Neck, NC. Since we have a membership to the NC Zoo we got free admission to Sylvan Heights. It’s a little over an hour’s drive from our home and a nice drive through the NC countryside.

Since we got in free we decided to spend a little on some of the extras they offered. We purchased some duck food ($1 per bag), an endangered species passport ($3), a scavenger hunt($2), parakeet food sticks ($1 per stick), and ice cream ($3 each). Here are some of my thoughts on our extra expenses. Next time I would only buy 1 bag of duck food if any. The ducks were well-fed and not that interested in the food we gave them although the kids did enjoy trying to give them food. Jude loves the endangered species passport, it’s geared toward kids that can read well and has questions they must answer after finding the different birds. We probably won’t buy it next time since we already did it but I would recommend it. The scavenger hunt ended up just being me marking things off the sheet. It’s designed for younger kids that can’t read my younger kids weren’t really into it. I would suggest passing on this unless you have a very attentive young child. The parakeet food sticks were a lot of fun although there were a lot of birds trying to eat the food you had. It can be a little overwhelming for young kids. But I would totally do it again, it was a lot of fun to see my kids covered in birds! And of course, Ice cream is always worth it.

My kid’s favorites from our trip were the ice cream, playground, flamingos, peacocks, all the ducks (including 1-day-old ducklings), and owls. I liked the macaws, scarlet ibis, great argus, emu, and black neck swans.