|
In our fascinating
hobby there are lots of people who have started up keeping birds
through influences from some part of their families, whether direct,
(parents etc) or indirect, (marriages etc). In my case, I was
influenced by my father, and to a degree, some of his friends. Back in
the early 70’s, birds, namely parrots, were very easy for me
to come by, because of the fact that my father had heaps of them. At an
early age, I kept parrots at home and was allocated a couple of
aviaries by my dad to keep them in and look after them. Birds such as
red wings, King parrots, Superb parrots, Grass parrots, Mulga parrots,
Mallee ringnecks, Blue Bonnetts, Cockatiels, Rosella's such as Eastern,
Yellow, Crimson, and Pale heads were all readily available to me, just
to name a few, and of course who could forget, the spectacular Major
Mitchell’s Cockatoo. These birds I have mentioned were the"
in thing" back in those days and were easily swapped or sold off to
obtain other birds.
In the mid to late 70’s, my dad
branched out into Lovebirds and Peach faces, and was one of the first
in this country to breed the Blue Masked Lovebird, as well as the White
Faced Pastel Blue Peach face, both of them beautiful little parrots.
From there came more mutations such as Yellow, White and then after
years of working on different combinations, the Albino Masks. My dad
was very strong about the fact that they were 100% pure masks and not
Fisher/mask Hybrids, as some people were breeding at around the same
time. Mutations in the Peach faces started to flow as well, colours
such as Yellow, Olive, Ivory, Cinnamon, and Pied just to name a few. It
wasn’t long before my dad’s name as a successful
breeder in these birds spread around the country, and I can remember
people would travel great distances to see his collection and maybe be
lucky enough to buy some of his young stock. My dad use to spend hours
and hours on the telephone discussing combinations and tactics, also
giving information to other aviculturists, as well as prices with other
breeders, which he thought was part of being a well known breeder. As
the years went by dad slowly thinned out his collection in Australian
Parrots to accommodate his expansion into those fascinating little
parrots. He even built a special bird room in which he would house his
good breeding pairs and most expensive birds. Cabinets one on top of
the other, was the ideal way to breed these birds. In his bird room he
would have as many as 3 to 4 cabinets, specially designed, stacked
high, but only to eye level so he could control their breeding. His
love and dedication for these little birds lasted many, many years,
until everybody started getting big collections of them, and the demand
for them died off, this was the time he thought to get out of them and
get back into Australian birds, but with a difference. The difference
being that they would all be hand reared, and in big flights so he
could walk into them and his birds would land all over him.
|
