Thanks to all of you who braved the weather to attend our Social Evening; I hope you all enjoyed the informality of it. I would also like to thank Jacky and Julie for helping Chris set up and John for taking the photos.  I just hope you didn’t break the camera!

Chris welcomed everyone to the evening and hoped we had all had a good year for 2005 and wished us an even better year for 2006.   It was great to have the company of our President Elect, Gerald Binks.  Our club will certainly benefit from his knowledge and input.

The chat around the tables was about everything from birds (as you would expect) to computers and digital cameras. We just hope a certain senior member will let his wife have a dominant pied to go with the yellow face she already has!

A couple of members said they had lost good birds, which is such a sad thing this early in the breeding season.  However, hopefully it is just a small hick-up and everything else will go well from now on.

A good breeding season and Happy New Year to you all.

Bring & Buy Evening

Thank you to all who came to the bring and buy sale. We all had a good time and the banter flowed thick and fast (mostly from the chair and your auctioneer for the night).

The evening started with tea, coffee and a chat about the club show and the up coming breeding season, which is such a nice way to start the evening. We had a lot of ‘lots’ to get through. Thanks to Malcolm for collecting your money, to John Gorrell for taking the photos but mostly for all present who put their hands in their pockets and parted with their money.

The cheapest was a fluffy pen, which went for 50p.  To everyone who bought from the bring and buy or who left items to auction, a very big ‘thank you’. To all those of you who put your hands in your pockets for the raffle, our thanks again.  We raised just over a £100 and it was a great night.

JUDGING COMPETITION

I spoke to Defra prior to the meeting, explaining about our club’s pairs judging competition at Northdowns BS and giving them all the details, my contact number, the format in which it would be presented to the members and our Bio Security conforming to BS rulings.  Defra said if there were any problems they would contact me direct.

Having received no calls from them by 6pm our evening’s entertainment went ahead, with our President Elect, Gerald Binks, doing the honours of placing the pairings from 1 - 10 in the order in which he thought would produce the best youngsters.  He also chose the best cock & hen from any cage as the overall best pair and indicated which bird he would take home if given the choice.

Once decided it was now the members task to try and match Geralds choice, if possible, which turned out a fun time for all because of the pairings in front of them. It was agreed that condition was not to be taken into account, it was the features of the birds themselves that counted.

When all slips had been collected the nearest to Gerald’s selection was Mick Mapston, who was congratulated by everyone.

The seating and bird tables were then rearranged so that Gerald could put the birds in order of merit and explain the reasons for their placing and point out the various good and poor features within each pairing [in his opinion].

All in all it was a very enjoyable social evening, which is what club nights should be.  Our thanks again to Gerald for judging and entertaining us and our good wishes for the 2nd edition of his book, The Challenge, which should be with us in the spring of 2006.

PAT & GREN NORRIS - September 05

Our Chairman introduced our speakers, Pat & Gren Norris, who went on to explain the evening’s format, which was a film show with comments about the birds and the various  features they were putting into them.

Gren was the ‘flicker’ as Pat pointed out the back ground and blood lines and where they came from. They spoke about the two very bad breeding seasons they had experienced, having bred only 7 one year and 43 the next. However, they had rung 170 this year, without any Lutinos producing. They said they had brought in new stock, with the cocks having long flight characteristics to enhance the length of the birds & hens that sat very upright without being heavy under neath[as these are the type that do not breed] but both sexes have to have blow on head feathers. Gren said to be very carefull not to double up on long flight birds[not for beginners]

The use of a good cock to several hens is critical to building a good stud. Up to four hens will be used with certain cock birds to produce the desired features in the chicks.  We then touched on A.I., which is used abroad in certain countrys which produces very good birds [peas in pods] but may end with a strain that will not breed themselves in the future. TEA   TIME

After the break, which had lots of discussion going on, Gren started talking about their light Green 2001 rung which kept breeding ‘good uns’.  When the bird returned to the flight for rest he looked poor and bullied other birds so it was best to carry on using him and get good chicks.

They both talked about the importance of their dark factor birds, also about putting a dark green pied cock into their lutinos for double factor = cobalts. They said that if albinos popped up it wouldn’t be a problem if the quality was good.

We ended with a questions and answers session which was not dull to say the least and very informative.

With the raffle drawn and kindest thanks to our guests the evening closed. There was thanks from the floor to Chris Angus-Smith for entertaining and feeding our guests before the meeting and for donating the funds for their bed & breakfast.

Club Evening Wednesday 20th July

On Wednesday July 20^th we were entertained by George Booth [BS President Elect] and Phil Proctor from Worcester.  Our thanks to them. They started by each giving step-by-step accounts of their introduction to keeping birds, which was both interesting and amusing. As we all know, Phil was well known for his Clearwings through his successes on the show bench.   Although a purist on colour in his early days, he soon started to introduce the larger varieties as outcrosses, which weakened the clarity of wing markings but kept him winning on the show bench. He bred a super Yellow-wing cock out of a green outcross third generation that pushed hard for BIS [Judges were 2-2-1 the judge that voted on single bird was brought back, but unfortunately went with the Cinnamon.]

Although in a partnership they kept their birds as two separate studs, which allowed them to have their own outcrosses within the partnership. Phil has not kept birds for the last twelve months, but still keeps involved and up to date with the fancy.

George, on the other hand, has a passion for good Light Greens, which is the toughest class to win. George was also in a partnership for 7 or 8 years, which had the advantage of his partner being able to check and help to show the birds when he was on shift work. He let go all of his blue stock to concentrate on the greens and his fortune changed when he swapped a bird with the late Jim Moffett [Goodun].  George went on to talk about the spangle and how we are spoiling them by using Opalines & Cinnamons, which is diluting markings and colour.

Both speakers said not to leave it to long before getting back to having an open show, as Northdowns was one of the better shows in the country, run very professionally with good entries. There were lots of questions and answers in the final session, including the mention of bringing back prize money to help swell show entries.  All enjoyed our guests and the way they came across.

This was well attended by members plus two new members joined, although there were not as many birds as expected for our appointed Judge of the evening, Ron Payne and Show Secretary Nigel Darley.

We asked Ron to explain the judging and comment as he went along, on the style of the American judging system, with members sitting in front of the birds. Everyone enjoyed this.

Winners:
Best Budgerigar:  Geoff Dell D/Factor Spangle
Best B/Head:        Jackie Fox Albino
Best Champion:    Geoff Dell
Best Intermiate:    John Harvey

All had a good social evening with plenty of interaction and discussions about shows and breeding problems. Mick Mapston was busy selling his wares, as you can see from the photos.