Enemy No. 1: Complacency

Take your eye fractionally off the ball, and birdkeeping tends to turn round and bite you... DAVE BROWN shares a lesson in husbandry that can’t be learned and applied often enough.

- Dave Brown

COMMENT

WHEN things are ticking along, it is easy to get complacent: a trait that should be avoided in birdkeeping, if disasters are to be averted. Back in the summer, a new pair of stylish, orange-breasted, black-breasted, chestnut-flanked white (CFW) zebra finches, bred by Dutch fancier John Spijker, arrived in my birdroom. In appearance, they were certainly different, with the vivid orange usually seen in cock orange-breasted/ black-breasted combos taking on a subtler, diluted peach shade. Even better, both showed reasonable UK type with a bit of head quality and size.