Dolores Noonan
In 1991 I was working on the Census, when I called on a bird dealer. I rather fancied having a canary to sing to me and was persuaded to buy a pair of Glosters. I bought a cage and went home with my purchases. The next morning I was very surprised to find that the pair had produced an egg - I hurriedly obtained a nesting pan and 3 months later, I was the proud owner of 14 Gloster canaries.
My son now thought he now had the perfect present for me and turned up on the doorstep with 2 lutino cockatiels in a cage. Very pretty if somewhat noisy! My neighbour then saw the birds and asked if I would take her to the dealer to buy a budgerigar, so off we went, and yes, you've guessed it, she got her budgie and I got 2 pairs!
Pro-creation was the name of the game. A pair of rosa bourkes was added to the collection and a pair of turquoisines. The canaries continued producing and the budgies were a close second. The cockateils were less obliging and I then discovered I had 2 males, which explained their lack of creative activity.
I went away on a Christian Listeners Tutors course at this point, and found myself in a 'goldfish bowl' situation, where I sat in the middle of the group and talked. As I talked and started to listen to myself, I realized that my bird population was getting out of hand and that something had to be done. Sitting on a chair in the middle of a circle of 20 people, I decided to get rid of all the birds apart from the budgies. I put this into practice as soon as I got home and exchanged all my birds for brightly coloured budgies.
One of the newcomers was a skyblue clearwing and a friend persuaded me to enter it in a local Cage Bird Society Show. Much to my delight, I came home with a trophy and I was then hooked on the show scene. Once I started going to the shows and looking at the exhibition stock, I had to reluctantly admit that my birds, with the exception of a few that I had bought at a pet shop and had rings on them, were simply not up to standard so I had to start all over again, buying in better quality stock. I tried to improve the birds that I already had, but this was not a successful enterprise and I then had to make the decision to sell all the pet stock and concentrate on something better.
I joined the Budgerigar Society and traced the address of the breeder who had supplied the pet shop. He turned out to be a champion breeder called John Farnham who then helped me considerably. He was a breeder of rares and so I started to restock with dark factors, including clearwings and violets. I then got myself some clearbodies from Jeff Attwood, a few albinos and lutinos and I was on my way.
I no longer have the rares, although I was quite successful with them. I still have my albinos and violets. Added to them are now spangles and dominant pieds and a good selection of quality normals and I am now going down the exhibition road with some success.
So, should you get a sudden urge to buy a canary, be very careful, or you too may end up with 250 budgerigars!
 |
 |
 |
Copyright © 2000, Dolores Noonan. All rights reserved.