my names ian birch and im origanally from paignton in devon but now live in northamptonshire with my missess and 2 children.

growing up i remember my family always had birds of one kind or another from budgies to pigeons and even finches.

i had never had any interest in any of the birds we had kept as i was growing up and like many people had always thought of bird keeping as a hobby

that was for oldmen who would wonder up the garden in there tartan slippers smoking a woodbine and moaning about the holes in there cardigan.

i felt this way for many years and often thought sados when i heard people talking about there pigeons or how there budgie had said hello.i remember thinking

"how sad these people are worrying about if there pigeon was going to make it home from bimingham or if it would get lost or eaten on the way"

one day about 4 years ago my daughter asked if we could have a budgerigar in a cage and teach it to talk my first thought was no way.

i was not going to become one of these people i had despised all my life and end up wearing slippers and cardigans with a budgie called charlie

sitting in a cage with me yelling whos a pretty boy then.

after 4 days of constant nagging from my daughter and the missess saying"go on dont be mean"i relented and the following day we purchased smudge a little

albino cock and 2 weeks later due to my son moaning he also wanted a budgie a lutino hen called giz.

shortly after aquiring our 2 budgies a freind asked if we could look after his 4 budgies why he was away house hunting.3 weeks later he asked us to keep the birds

due to where he was moving into would not allow pets.so we now had 6 budgies all in the house making so much noise it was impossible to watch baywatch and follow the story lines.

it was then decided to build a small avairy at the bottom of the garden to house our feathered freinds and to allow us some peace and sanity.

at the time of building the avairy all i could think about was "tartan slippers" and "cardigans".4 days later the avairy was built,the birds were in there and not a tartan slipper or cardigan in sight and once again i could follow the riveting story lines of baywatch in peace.

i decided to join a budgie website after we decided to add some nestboxes and try and breed our little freinds.the site i joined and am still a member now is called

budgerigars(there is a link to the site on the link page).on this site i learned not just about budgies but about the exhibition budgerigar and i was hooked.

i found a breeder of exhibition budgerigars who lived not to far and proceeded to buy 8 birds from him and set about building another avairy(the tartan slippers and cardigans were getting closer) to house my new birds.

we now have around 100 pet budgerigars at the bottom of the garden and around 50 exhibition budgerigars in the birdroom .

i am hoping to start showing in the near future and continue for many years to come in my new found love of exhibition budgerigars and still no cardigans

..........................but the tartan slippers are ..............................lets just say they are not as bad as i first thought.

please feel free to contact me.my details are in the link

Site Last Updated - 07/10/2011 23:45:03