An English Perspective 

               by Steve Holland

 Steve remembers playing in the dirt of his father’s aviary as a young boy.  Today he is in a partnership with his father and brother called "The Holland Stud".  They are all judges and Champion exhibitors.  The MBS is grateful for Steve's contribution to our Articles list.

Lite Green Opaline

Grey Green Cock

Sky Spangle

Wherever you go in the world there will be a date when the budgerigar show season comes to an end, in the UK, dependent on your location, that date is late September to early/mid October. At this point the hobby goes into hibernation, with showmen changing into stockmen in their attempts to breed their show teams for the following year. From this point onwards the hobby can be a very isolated as the near weekly shows, where you can see friend, are over and the only social evens tend to be the once monthly club meeting. Unlike many countries where the show season will restart some eight months after the last ended, here in the UK around mid March the nest feather shows start. Following conversations on the phone and inter-net I became aware that these types of shows do not take place in the USA and have been asked to explain what they are and the pro’s and con’s of the events. So firstly what is a nest feather show!

Well as the title indicates it’s a show held purely for nest feather birds. But what constitutes a nest feather bird and it’s this one issue that causes more problems at the shows than any other and gives the judges more headaches. Strictly speaking a nest feather bird should appear as it left the nest with no breaks in its head bars, no loss of tail or flight feathers and no spots moulted through and no pin feathers in the head. In truth this will give the breeder a window of, up to a couple of months when the bird can be shown, dependent on the weather conditions the bird is being kept in. It is also true that most judges will allow minor deviations from the “true nest feather” stage of development when judging these types of shows.  Given that these birds are young and immature the next question has to be “what standards of excellence” does the judge uses as their guide. After all, the standard as laid down by any governing body will be for adult moulted birds and some of the faults as laid down for an adult will not apply to a young bird. Lets face it a nest feather bird will not drop spots and the overall size of the young bird will not be that of a mature adult bird for which the standards are written. So what tends to happen is the scale of points remains the same for size, shape and deportment, but is applied to the smaller version of the adult?

When it comes to issues like the spot what tends to happen is depth of mask is used as a criteria. From the above you will see that the majority of the decision is purely in the judge’s hand and is where I would suggest, if you start to stage these type of events you should write a scale of points, not only as an aid to the judge but also as an aid to the exhibitor. The next issue with this type of event has to be when and for how long the show is staged. In the UK they tend to be split into two camps. The first tends to be staged by the large area societies. These evens attract an entry of around 100 birds and will be staged either on a Saturday or Sunday. The birds will be accepted from 09.00hrs, judged from 10.30hrs and the judging will be completed by 12.30hrs. The show will be open to the public for a maximum of three hours, which allows the birds to be on their way home in a reasonable time period.