Big changes coming to Sylvan Heights Waterfowl Park

A little birdie told us that Sylvan Heights Waterfowl Park in Scotland Neck, N.C., will celebrate its fifth anniversary Saturday with special prices and entertainment, plus a few announcements.

“It’s a big day for us,” said spokesman Brent Lubbock. “The anniversary celebration will kick off with some big announcements at 11.”

Those announcements, we hear, will involve a name change and webcams.

In honor of the fifth anniversary, admission to the internationally recognized waterfowl park will be $5 for adults, almost half price. Special events will take place between 11 a.m. and 2 p.m., and the park will be open from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.

The Lumbee tribe of North Carolina will present dancing and drumming demonstrations.

“They said they’d help us if we’d give them some feathers,” Lubbock said. “With a facility like ours, there are a lot of feathers.”

Park founder Mike Lubbock will explain the different kinds of feathers after the ceremony, followed by a live bird demonstration.

Mike Lubbock started Sylvan Heights as a breeding center for endangered waterfowl. Since moving to Scotland Neck in 1989, the breeding facility has attracted zookeepers, students and bird breeders from around the world to its training program.

That facility is private, but in 2006 the adjacent 18-acre park opened to the public, with aviaries and pools to display more than 1,500 birds – more than half the known species of ducks, geese and swans – in addition to cranes, flamingos, parrots, kookaburras and many others. The park was featured earlier this year in an Explore! story in The Daily Break.

The celebration will take place rain or shine.

Diane Tennant, (757) 446-2478, diane.tennant@pilotonline.com