Above: Jon Ashby: ‘How could I reach the whole town and get one new member into the fancy?’ JON ASHBY identifies an opportunity to attract newcomers to a fun and not too ambitious engagement with birdkeeping. Now what’s the…
Above: ‘Good training is based on trust’: Selina works with a magpie goose. This spectacular bird is native to Australia and New Guinea. Photo: WWT Slimbridge/Selina Reid, unless stated Training wildfowl is not easy, but SELINA REID is doing it…
Photo: Male (right) and female common pheasant: a familiar sighting in the 15th century. Experts believe that the Romans brought this bird to the UK. The common pheasant: hunted, shot and eaten for hundreds of years. Graham Wellstead looks at…
Photo: © Shutterstock.com/aaltair. Wallcreeper: note the dusky-grey head and shoulders with crimson on the wing coverts and base of primary and secondary feathers The wallcreeper is best known for scaling the Pyrenees and the Alps, but sadly is rarely seen…
Photo: © Shutterstock.com/TashaBubo. Male kestrel Former British birdkeeper Jarrod Cotter looks at the kestrel, familiar for its ability to hover while hunting for prey THE kestrel is perhaps our most familiar bird of prey, because it is so frequently…
Photo: The average hobby breeder will now have to consider and document any expenses incurred from their birdkeeping activities due to the Animal Activities License legislation Are breeders cheating themselves? asks Rosemary Low. Does the price keepers ask for…
Photo: Graham Wellstead. Mica, Graham’s red-tailed hawk, out of the aviary and on the perch, ready to start training Just like her namesake, Mica the red-tailed hawk was always going to be special to Graham Wellstead. In the first of two…
Photo: Geoff Gale pictured with two of his winning lovebirds at the Lovebird (1990) Society’s 2018 members’ show Sometimes an unconventional approach can pay off, as Geoff Gale found when he tried breeding the rare pale-headed peach-face mutation, with some interesting…
Photo: Berry raider: redwings often visit gardens to gorge on fruit early in the morning, then slip away as soon as the curtains are opened Bill Naylor hails that cracking little thrush, the redwing, which swarms to Britain every…
Photo: Also bred in Scotland… Donald with his best Giboso at Stafford, an unflighted cock What a positive season it has been for breeders of old and rare variety canaries – none more so than the Scots fancy, which…