I have probably passed on about 70% of the
records of the escaped birds from the cog list to members in the relevant
clubs.
The clubs for cage birds are
mainly
Aviculturalists society
Canberra Finch Club
Canberra canary club
Budgie society
I am a member of the finch club.
There are also pigeon and poultry clubs
(although no peacock clubs as far as I know).
They are all listed under ‘clubs-bird’ in the
yellow pages.
So far I have had a zero success rate with
locating the owners.
In one of the census of Pop and housing,
perhaps the last one, it stated 10% of households keep birds. I thought this was
rather high because that means about 10,000 bird keepers. I would expect about 10-20% of those keep more than one
bird. So the owners of escaped birds
are a little hard to locate, and
not all are members of a club.
I like the idea of a website listing lost
birds.
I am surprised by the attitude of the person
who spoke to Susan. I have never heard that argument before. About sick birds. I would say generally
all bird keepers would want their bird back. I think more experienced bird
keepers are more frustrated by escaper
birds because they know how difficult it is to catch them again, even if
they hang around their house. It can often take many days. So their attitude may be less
enthusiastic.
Princess parrots are cheap, $30
maybe.
Benj Whitworth
A strange and interesting story. I wonder how
widespread that attitude is or did Susan just strike someone unhelpful or on a
bad day or something like that. I suppose he was referring to beak and feather
disease. Even so, I would have thought that risk would be low, however the
consequences would be high. It would also depend on the value of the bird and of
course the simple fact that even if the owner knows where the bird is, unless it
is really tame, it is very hard to catch it, once it is away from view of the
aviary it came from.
For what it is worth, Princess Parrot is one of the
non-local species that has been recorded in the GBS.
p.s. A side point, I write escaper or releasee. I
believe that someone who escapes is an escaper or even escapist if they are
skilled at it. Whereas an escapee is or should be, someone to whom an
escape has happened. This is in consistency to normal word use and contrary to
the way the word has commonly been used.
Philip
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