Cage & Aviary Birds

THE DONCASTER BORDER Fancy Canary Club (BFCC) open show, held on October 12 at Bawtry New Hall, was named the John Balme Memorial Show in honour of the late fancier. Club officials described Mr Balme as “more than just a fellow breeder – he was a men

GREEDY SEABIRDS MAY catch more than they bargained for when stealing food from birds infected with avian flu. The H5N1 virus has killed millions of birds worldwide since 2021 and may be spread through kleptoparasitism, when species such as frigatebir

SCIENTISTS AT THE University of Tsukuba in Japan have developed a method for culturing fertilised chick eggs without their shells. Attempts to observe the embryonic development of chickens date back to 300BC but, owing to the opaqueness of the eggshe

EVERY month I find plenty of interest in your “View from the North Downs” column. We retired folk have so much to gain from the world of birds, and the North Downs news is a reminder that birds can enrich our lives both in and out of aviaries or bird

From Ghalib’s house we went to meet Frank Silva. I know many guys have asked why I visited him. It’s because I am certain that he did not achieve all that success and revolution in his day, when the hobby came out of nowhere. I was sure that he’d hav

WHEN my dad and I originally made the birdroom, we built our own cages out of melamine. We used fibre-glass cage fronts and the first nest-boxes we installed were wooden box-in-a-box style ones. After one season, we replaced the wooden nest-boxes wit

THIS is a substantial topic. It depends on how much space you have and, more importantly, how much money you can throw at it! Also, you have to think how much of the garden you can take up without upsetting your wife or husband. Then you need to cons

“ I WONDERED if you’d do something on ‘my dream birdroom’ – the set-up you’d go for if you could start from scratch and have what you wanted.” That was the polite request from editor Rob. Perhaps in normal circumstances my imagination would have run

THE society made the decision last year to swap their two shows around by having the area show in July, to avoid the threat of bird flu in the autumn, and the specialist and rare variety show in October, but unfortunately that did not pay dividends,

WITH more than 370 combined budgerigar entries, 30 zebra finch, 16 Bengalese and nine other foreign birds to be judged, there was some hard work carried out by the judges to get their respective groups best-in-show and best-insection winners. Richard

FORMER BUDGERIGAR SOCIETY (BS) president, sporting great and well-known fancier, Geoff Capes has died aged 75. Mr Capes passed away on October 23. He joined the BS in 1973 and passed his judges test in 1996. He judged at numerous shows in the UK, Bra