Lost bird service COMMENT booming in Aust. · Parrots: Hand-reared birds 10-11 Parrots: Two amazons...
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EDITORIAL & ADVERTISING Lloyd Marshall Telephone .............................03 5983 2566 Email ..................[email protected] Website.............. www.talkingbirds.com.au PO Box 216 Balnarring Victoria 3926 DEADLINES FOR ADVERTISING BOOKINGS AND COPY July 2013 edition Display advertisements ................ June 14 Aviary marketplace ....................... June 28 SUBSCRIPTIONS Subscriptions to Talking Birds, which cost $87 a year in Australia, can be arranged by filling out and mailing the subscription form, together with the appropriate payment. The form can be found on page 20 of this edi- tion and at www.talking birds.com.au. DISTRIBUTION Talking Birds is distributed to newsagents throughout Australia. If your local news- agent does not stock the magazine please ask him/her to contact Wrapaway Transport on 02 9550 1622 or via email at [email protected]. COPYRIGHT Copyright for all editorial copy and photo- graphs published in Talking Birds remains with the author or photographer and can- not be reproduced in any media without the author’s/photographer’s permission. DISCLAIMER The publisher of Talking Birds newsmagazine ac- cepts no responsibility for the contents of advert- isements submitted for publication by the news- magazine’s clients. It is the advertisers’ respons- ibility to ensure that their advertisements are hon- est and accurate. It is also the advertisers’ res- ponsibility to ensure that any sales of birds, goods, services and products comply with the relevant legal requirements. Talking Birds and its publish- er will not become involved in disputes between advertisers and people who have dealt with ad- vertisers as a result of reading information con- tained in advertisements in Talking Birds news- magazine. The publisher of Talking Birds news- magazine accepts no liability for any dispute re- sulting from information contained in advertise- ments published in Talking Birds newsmagazine. The newsmagazine’s publisher reserves the right to refuse to publish any advertisement presented for publication. Opinions expressed in editorial material and in advertisements published in Talking Birds newsmagazine are not necessarily those held by the publisher of Talking Birds newsmaga- zine. Printed by Spotpress Pty Ltd, 24-26 Lilian Fowler Place, Marrickville, NSW Page 2 — Talking Birds — June 2013 Australasian news in brief 3 Aviary Marketplace 17-18 Budgies: Enjoyment the key 5 Canaries: Perfectly formed 8 Club listings 19 Club news 15, 16, 20 Fancy pigeons: Minis attractive 13 Finches: Choosing aviary mates 7 Finches: Gouldians + satellites 6 Finches: US smuggler jailed 6 Forthcoming events 20 Health: Cancer how and why 14 Parrots: Hand-reared birds 10-11 Parrots: Two amazons profiled 9 Peacock feathers banned 4 Pet birds: New arrival thoughts 12 Pigeon sells for $400,000 13 World news in brief 4 THIS MONTH IN YOUR MAGAZINE COVER:HAND-RAISED ALEXANDRINE PARAKEETS TAKING FOOD FROM BOB PHILPOT . PHOTO:BOB PHILPOT . SEE: HAND REARING... — PAGES 10-11. Australia’s avian newsmagazine PUBLISHED EVERY MONTH By LLOYD MARSHALL AN electronic missing bird service bas- ed in the UK that is reuniting lost birds with owners around the world has been doing really well in Australia. Last month the site had around 70 lost and found reports from Australia in- cluding Alexandrines, cockatiels, con- ures, cockatoos, corellas, eclectus, In- dian ringnecks, kakarikis, lorikeets, lovebirds, macaws, Quakers, galahs, Major Mitchell’s, budgies and rosellas. Englishman Neil Rutherford is the man behind ParrotAlert — www.parrot alert.com — a free worldwide service where information about missing birds is instantly emailed to subscribers in the area where the bird went missing. He has been funding ParrotAlert out of his own pocket for the past few years and is now approaching the point where donations are covering costs. The site is free to use and due to the huge number of emails sent daily a dedicated email server had to be leased. “Shared hosting companies impose a daily limit of between 250 to 500, which in my case is less than one Brisbane lost or found report,” Mr Rutherford said. “ParrotAlert was built from the ground up, it’s not built using any other product out there, I do use the google developers edition of google maps as a means of visually obtaining and dis- playing the geographic positions of re- ports.” Last month the site had 36,045 visi- tors worldwide, the highest on record. “With still four days to go we’ve al- ready broken last month’s total,” Mr Rutherford said. He said ParrotAlert was designed to work much like a satellite navigation device, with geographical positioning and targeting. “It breaks with the mentality of state, county and town as internally it’s all geo-point driven, for accuracy to within metres,” he said. “It works on the concept of the direc- tion the crow flies. The site targets members by their distance from a re- ported position which will be ideal for when we bring our GPS-enabled phone app out.” Mr Rutherford said ParrotAlert was built on the socialising lost and found model. “You give us a location ofa bird lost or found, we’ll email alert all regis- tered members within a given radius, we auto cross post on facebook and twitter, and bird forums around the world pull our feed alerts into their lost and found sections,” he said. “No matter how it’s shared via face- book etc, it all comes back to the one report on our site. “We send between 3000-10,000 email alerts worldwide a day and 10 reports for the Brisbane area can generate over 5000 email alerts.” He said the site has had a lot of re- unites via people getting a found report in their email inbox and identifying the bird as theirs. “If you go to our facebook page we publish the good reunites there, it’s not all of them,” Mr Rutherford said. “Brisbane Bird Vets have used our site since the launch, even when we had little on there — in January this year alone they reunited more birds handed in via ParrotAlert than they did during the whole of last year. “We’ve noticed lots of vets and ani- mal hospitals using the service to list. Even the RSPCA in Queensland has listed birds on ParrotAlert. “We provide our service to Australia, UK, US, Canada, Ireland and few other countries. “Currently we’re only operating in the English language, we do plan to extend this to other countries and lan- guages. “Australia is really the busiest coun- try of the lot at the moment. “As it’s warming up in the UK, Can- ada and the US we’re starting to see more daily reports submitted — we get between 10 to 40 a day.” T HE 2013 Gouldian finch count in WA’s north-west early in September this year will be the last and leading Gouldian researcher Sarah Pryke explains on page 6 of this edition why the annual census has become redundant and how the focus from September will be on utilising technology to keep track of the beautiful little birds. That turn of events saddened Sarah because she enjoyed the company of many volunteer bird people from Australia and around the world who participated in the counts each year. Wyndham in the Kimberley is not the flashest place on earth and everyone who has served as a volunteer Gouldian counter there deserves a huge pat on the back. ■ NUMBERS DOWN, OPTIMISM UP: The bird sale season for 2013 is well and truly underway and it seems that the number of birds offered is down in most places and that demand is low, possibly due to financial constraints but that may all change at the relocated Castle Hill bird sale, where a new, larger venue, $20 a head dinner the night before with a great speaker — Bob Philpot from Perth — and a high level of enthusiasm from the organising group seem likely to make the event a roaring success and one that should definitely not be missed, see advertisement on page 17 and story on page 15 for more information. ■ $400,000 RACER: Bird people in Australia are often heard complaining about prices asked for species they fancy but compared to a recent sale in Belgium, where a racing pigeon sold to a Chinese man for $400,000, we really do not have much to whinge about. The same auction where that bird changed hands saw a high-profile breeder’s stud of 530 birds bring a world record price of $5.58 million. Europe is in huge trouble financially but obviously some pigeon people from China, who accounted for nine of the top 10 birds at the auction, are unwittingly doing Belgium a favour. Wouldn’t it be nice if that sort of thing happened here? That story is on page 13. ■ ENJOYMENT FOCUS: Budgie writer Fred Wright provides food for thought in his piece this month which focuses on the fact that we should enjoy our birds, putting aside club politics, winning competitions and making money. The main thing according to Fred is to remember what got us into birds in the first place, the wonder of seeing youngsters in a nest, the colours and the enjoyment you experienced way back when. He makes some very good points and they could probably easily apply to any of us. Read his piece on page 5. —Lloyd Marshall COMMENT Chooks get nappies THERE’S free range and then there’s free rein — around your house. When American Julie Baker’s backyard fowls began spending more time inside it was tough to keep them clean so she got innovative. She made a cloth nappy, added a few buttons and strapped it onto her little lady. One thing led to another and a business was born. Pampered Poultry sells 50-100 nappies a week to urban farmers around the United States and the online store also sells saddles. Wait a minute. Saddles? Who’s riding chickens? “The roosters,” Baker said. “They’re busy boys. Saddles are almost more useful than the diaper, quite frankly. A rooster isn’t particularly kind to a hen when they mate. He grabs her by the back and pulls her feathers out.” So she started selling saddles to protect the hens’ tail feathers and she’s not the only one. Husband and wife team Derek Sasaki and Traci Torres turned their fowl accessories business into a multi-million dollar venture called MyPetChicken.com where nappies are some of the offerings. ODD SPOT Lost bird service booming in Aust. Victoria non-natives move THE Victorian Department of Envi- ronment and Primary Industries is looking into the management of non- native birds in Victoria. A briefing for interested parties held in Melbourne on May 30 this year was at- tended by David Renshaw, vice president of the Victorian Avicultural Council, who said it was very refreshing to find that representatives from the DEPI were gen- uinely interested in obtaining feedback from aviculturists as well as from other interested parties. “It is important that aviculturists take the time to review the proposed in- formation from the DEPI and forward their comments to me by email — ren [email protected] — by June 16 so feedback can be collated and sent to the DEPI by June 28,” David said.
Transcript of Lost bird service COMMENT booming in Aust. · Parrots: Hand-reared birds 10-11 Parrots: Two amazons...
EDITORIAL & ADVERTISINGLloyd MarshallTelephone .............................03 5983 2566Email..................lloyd@talkingbirds.com.auWebsite..............www.talkingbirds.com.auPO Box 216 Balnarring Victoria 3926
DEADLINES FOR ADVERTISINGBOOKINGS AND COPYJuly 2013 editionDisplay advertisements ................June 14Aviary marketplace .......................June 28SUBSCRIPTIONSSubscriptions to Talking Birds, which cost$87 a year in Australia, can be arranged byfilling out and mailing the subscription form,together with the appropriate payment. Theform can be found on page 20 of this edi-tion and at www.talking birds.com.au.
DISTRIBUTIONTalking Birds is distributed to newsagentsthroughout Australia. If your local news-agent does not stock the magazineplease ask him/her to contact WrapawayTransport on 02 9550 1622 or via email [email protected].
COPYRIGHTCopyright for all editorial copy and photo-graphs published in Talking Birds remainswith the author or photographer and can-not be reproduced in any media withoutthe author’s/photographer’s permission.
DISCLAIMERThe publisher of Talking Birds newsmagazine ac-cepts no responsibility for the contents of advert-isements submitted for publication by the news-magazine’s clients. It is the advertisers’ respons-ibility to ensure that their advertisements are hon-est and accurate. It is also the advertisers’ res-ponsibility to ensure that any sales of birds, goods,services and products comply with the relevantlegal requirements. Talking Birds and its publish-er will not become involved in disputes betweenadvertisers and people who have dealt with ad-vertisers as a result of reading information con-tained in advertisements in Talking Birds news-magazine. The publisher of Talking Birds news-magazine accepts no liability for any dispute re-sulting from information contained in advertise-ments published in Talking Birds newsmagazine.The newsmagazine’s publisher reserves the rightto refuse to publish any advertisement presentedfor publication. Opinions expressed in editorialmaterial and in advertisements published in TalkingBirds newsmagazine are not necessarily thoseheld by the publisher of Talking Birds newsmaga-zine. Printed by Spotpress Pty Ltd, 24-26 Lilian Fowler Place, Marrickville, NSW
Page 2 — Talking Birds — June 2013
Australasian news in brief 3Aviary Marketplace 17-18Budgies: Enjoyment the key 5Canaries: Perfectly formed 8Club listings 19Club news 15, 16, 20Fancy pigeons: Minis attractive 13Finches: Choosing aviary mates 7Finches: Gouldians + satellites 6
Finches: US smuggler jailed 6Forthcoming events 20Health: Cancer how and why 14Parrots: Hand-reared birds 10-11Parrots: Two amazons profiled 9Peacock feathers banned 4Pet birds: New arrival thoughts 12Pigeon sells for $400,000 13World news in brief 4
THIS MONTH IN YOUR MAGAZINE
COVER: HAND-RAISED ALEXANDRINE PARAKEETS TAKING FOOD FROM BOB PHILPOT.PHOTO:BOB PHILPOT. SEE: HAND REARING... — PAGES 10-11.
Australia’s avian newsmagazine PUBLISHED EVERY MONTH
By LLOYD MARSHALLAN electronic missing bird service bas-ed in the UK that is reuniting lost birdswith owners around the world has beendoing really well in Australia.
Last month the site had around 70 lostand found reports from Australia in-cluding Alexandrines, cockatiels, con-ures, cockatoos, corellas, eclectus, In-dian ringnecks, kakarikis, lorikeets,lovebirds, macaws, Quakers, galahs,Major Mitchell’s, budgies and rosellas.
Englishman Neil Rutherford is theman behind ParrotAlert — www.parrotalert.com — a free worldwide servicewhere information about missing birdsis instantly emailed to subscribers inthe area where the bird went missing.
He has been funding ParrotAlert outof his own pocket for the past few yearsand is now approaching the point wheredonations are covering costs.
The site is free to use and due to thehuge number of emails sent daily adedicated email server had to be leased.
“Shared hosting companies impose adaily limit of between 250 to 500, whichin my case is less than one Brisbane lostor found report,” Mr Rutherford said.
“ParrotAlert was built from theground up, it’s not built using any otherproduct out there, I do use the googledevelopers edition of google maps as ameans of visually obtaining and dis-playing the geographic positions of re-ports.”
Last month the site had 36,045 visi-tors worldwide, the highest on record.
“With still four days to go we’ve al-ready broken last month’s total,” MrRutherford said.
He said ParrotAlert was designed towork much like a satellite navigationdevice, with geographical positioningand targeting.
“It breaks with the mentality ofstate, county and town as internallyit’s all geo-point driven, for accuracy towithin metres,” he said.
“It works on the concept of the direc-tion the crow flies. The site targets
members by their distance from a re-ported position which will be ideal forwhen we bring our GPS-enabled phoneapp out.”
Mr Rutherford said ParrotAlert wasbuilt on the socialising lost and foundmodel.
“You give us a location of a bird lostor found, we’ll email alert all regis-tered members within a given radius,we auto cross post on facebook andtwitter, and bird forums around theworld pull our feed alerts into their lostand found sections,” he said.
“No matter how it’s shared via face-book etc, it all comes back to the onereport on our site.
“We send between 3000-10,000 emailalerts worldwide a day and 10 reportsfor the Brisbane area can generate over5000 email alerts.”
He said the site has had a lot of re-unites via people getting a found reportin their email inbox and identifyingthe bird as theirs.
“If you go to our facebook page wepublish the good reunites there, it’s notall of them,” Mr Rutherford said.
“Brisbane Bird Vets have used oursite since the launch, even when we hadlittle on there — in January this yearalone they reunited more birds handedin via ParrotAlert than they did duringthe whole of last year.
“We’ve noticed lots of vets and ani-mal hospitals using the service to list.Even the RSPCA in Queensland haslisted birds on ParrotAlert.
“We provide our service to Australia,UK, US, Canada, Ireland and few othercountries.
“Currently we’re only operating inthe English language, we do plan toextend this to other countries and lan-guages.
“Australia is really the busiest coun-try of the lot at the moment.
“As it’s warming up in the UK, Can-ada and the US we’re starting to seemore daily reports submitted — we getbetween 10 to 40 a day.”
THE 2013 Gouldian finch count inWA’s north-west early in Septemberthis year will be the last and leadingGouldian researcher Sarah Prykeexplains on page 6 of this editionwhy the annual census has becomeredundant and how the focus fromSeptember will be on utilisingtechnology to keep track of thebeautiful little birds.
That turn of events saddenedSarah because she enjoyed thecompany of many volunteer birdpeople from Australia and aroundthe world who participated in thecounts each year.
Wyndham in the Kimberley is notthe flashest place on earth andeveryone who has served as avolunteer Gouldian counter theredeserves a huge pat on the back.n NUMBERS DOWN, OPTIMISM UP: Thebird sale season for 2013 is well andtruly underway and it seems that thenumber of birds offered is down inmost places and that demand is low,possibly due to financial constraintsbut that may all change at therelocated Castle Hill bird sale, wherea new, larger venue, $20 a head dinnerthe night before with a great speaker— Bob Philpot from Perth — and ahigh level of enthusiasm from theorganising group seem likely tomake the event a roaring success andone that should definitely not bemissed, see advertisement on page 17and story on page 15 for moreinformation.
n $400,000 RACER: Bird people inAustralia are often heardcomplaining about prices asked forspecies they fancy but compared to arecent sale in Belgium, where aracing pigeon sold to a Chinese manfor $400,000, we really do not havemuch to whinge about.
The same auction where that birdchanged hands saw a high-profilebreeder’s stud of 530 birds bring aworld record price of $5.58 million.
Europe is in huge troublefinancially but obviously somepigeon people from China, whoaccounted for nine of the top 10 birdsat the auction, are unwittingly doingBelgium a favour. Wouldn’t it be niceif that sort of thing happened here?
That story is on page 13.n ENJOYMENT FOCUS: Budgie writerFred Wright provides food forthought in his piece this monthwhich focuses on the fact that weshould enjoy our birds, putting asideclub politics, winning competitionsand making money.
The main thing according to Fredis to remember what got us into birdsin the first place, the wonder ofseeing youngsters in a nest, thecolours and the enjoyment youexperienced way back when.
He makes some very good pointsand they could probably easily applyto any of us. Read his piece on page 5.
—Lloyd Marshall
COMMENT
Chooks get nappiesTHERE’S free range and then there’sfree rein — around your house.
When American Julie Baker’sbackyard fowls began spending moretime inside it was tough to keep themclean so she got innovative.
She made a cloth nappy, added a fewbuttons and strapped it onto her littlelady. One thing led to another and abusiness was born.
Pampered Poultry sells 50-100 nappiesa week to urban farmers around theUnited States and the online store alsosells saddles.
Wait a minute. Saddles? Who’s riding
chickens? “The roosters,” Baker said.“They’re busy boys. Saddles are almostmore useful than the diaper, quitefrankly. A rooster isn’t particularly kind toa hen when they mate. He grabs her by theback and pulls her feathers out.”
So she started selling saddles toprotect the hens’ tail feathers and she’snot the only one.
Husband and wife team Derek Sasakiand Traci Torres turned their fowlaccessories business into a multi-milliondollar venture called MyPetChicken.comwhere nappies are some of the offerings.
ODD SPOT
Lost bird servicebooming in Aust.
Victoria non-natives moveTHE Victorian Department of Envi-ronment and Primary Industries islooking into the management of non-native birds in Victoria.
A briefing for interested parties held inMelbourne on May 30 this year was at-tended by David Renshaw, vice presidentof the Victorian Avicultural Council, whosaid it was very refreshing to find thatrepresentatives from the DEPI were gen-
uinely interested in obtaining feedbackfrom aviculturists as well as from otherinterested parties.
“It is important that aviculturiststake the time to review the proposed in-formation from the DEPI and forwardtheir comments to me by email — [email protected] — by June 16 sofeedback can be collated and sent to theDEPI by June 28,” David said.
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