"For me, November means two things. Firstly we will be having a great weekend at the Budgerigar Society World Championship Show in Doncaster and secondly we will commence pairing up."
Once again the scene is set for the Club Show to be a great event with a number of new innovations which I look forward to. Especially interesting will be the staging of the exhibits by colour, however, I thought the comments made in the BS Club Show News in September’s edition of the Budgerigar to be misleading and I quote, "So no champion any age or novice young bird and so on this year." This implies that these awards have been done away with but this is certainly not the case if the schedule is anything to go by.
Putting the various colours together will indeed provide an excellent showcase but I just have to wonder what will happen at lifting time. Staging by colour may well help judging but it will certainly extend lifting time – perhaps that’s why lifting is now thirty minutes earlier than usual.
I have it on good authority that we can also expect a team of birds at the Club Show from overseas for the first time this year. A partnership from Belgium, who have been using BS Closed Rings on their birds, are planning on exhibiting as a result of a change in Belgium quarantine rules. Good luck to them.
It’s good to see that the budgerigar fraternity is going to benefit from the Moffat Charitable Trust – a trust set up following the death of Jim Moffat last year. BW Correspondent Jim Burns tells me that we are not the only ones to gain but carers throughout Ayrshire are to benefit also. The boost for The Princess Royal Trust for Carers will be used to help find the county’s ‘hidden’ carers and make them aware of the support provided by their local centres. Jim and Marjory Moffat supported The Princess Royal Trust for Carers for many years.
Publicity
Since starting the Budgerigar World Help Line that is a part of the Budgerigar World Web Site, I am amazed by the number of requests that I get from people asking to be put in touch with fanciers from whom they can buy Budgerigars. For the past 4 months I have averaged five requests per week mainly from Australia, USA and the UK. Understandably, quite a few are for pet birds but at least half are from potential breeders who want to get started or from colony breeders who wish to move into the exhibition arena. Fortunately I have been able to redirect all of the requests to fanciers who live in the right area.
What springs to mind is that we are really quite good at keeping ourselves informed as to what is happening within the hobby. Unfortunately however, this is a bit like preaching to the converted and tends to be at a knowledge level that most fanciers will understand – but what about non-fanciers? Firstly they never get to see the internal publicity and if they did it would mean very little to them. The question is how can we publicise our hobby to the general public? I know that in both American and Britain recent attempts have been made but I am totally unsighted as to what the effect was.
John Mollindinia, who has recently returned from an Australian Bird Watching tour, mentioned my comments in the September editorial re the successful fancier who was being black listed from show schedule mailing lists. He said, "It did not upset the fanciers of yesteryear when Harry Bryan, Ken Farmer and Alf Ormerod were winning at events. Our hope was to beat them however unlikely. I can remember when Ken had first to seventh inclusive in the Grey Green class at the Club Show. What a wonderful achievement and how in those days congratulations were in order. Harry Bryan rose to the occasion and had more Best In Shows at the National and BS Club Show. I can recall the National having 15 judges against the current 5 or so and was held in January. Remember, the membership in the BS in the fifties was 20,000 odd against what it is today."
Budgerigars Stolen
Frank Thomas from Stockton-on-Tees had a nasty shock when he discovered that his birdroom had been raided and his 40 best budgerigars had been stolen. The burglars took only the top birds leading Frank to believe that knowledgeable thieves carried it out.
The stolen birds, which included a Best In Show winner, were mainly Normals and rung T2302. A reward for information is being offered, further information to 01642-644720.
Derek Dobson also contacted me about the issue of stolen birds, he said, "The other week Ken Croft had birds stolen, last Friday evening Saturday morning Frank Thomas had 40 birds stolen. Perhaps in the future if say 40 fanciers got together and agree to offer £25 reward each, this would make a reward of £1000 when birds are stolen. The only time you would have to pay out would be when someone gave information for the safe return of stolen birds. It would be a syndicate, which the more that joined the less it would cost individually, or make the reward greater. I think it is a sign of the times we live in and as fanciers we have got to try and look after ourselves. Also all breeders who have web sites should link together so when something like this happens it can be posted very quickly and this would also act as a deterrent for would be thieves."
What do you think?