Northumbrian Notes With Austin Middlemiss

All it took was the availability of one gorgeous hen and Austin’s diplomatic breeding plans for next year were overthrown. But you’d do the same if you were offered this particular hen.

THIS month’s notes are given over exclusively to the thrushes, mainly because I have some exciting news – at least I’m excited about it, anyway.

After two years with a lonesome male Siberian thrush (Geokichla sibirica), I now have a hen for him. In all honesty, I had decided to take a break from breeding any thrushes at all next year. My intention was to keep some of the song thrushes for show purposes, but not to put any pairs down to breed next year. This decision was simply motivated by the fact that, although not at all difficult to keep and breed, when there are young they are more demanding of my time.

I like to ensure there is a constant and steady supply of dendrobaena worms and other livefood when young are in the nest. This means it is not always possible to just swan off for the entire day and I rightly find myself reminded by my wife that I promised, when I came back into the hobby, that the birds would be nowhere near as tying as they had been previously: “Just a few finches for interest, blah, blah, blah” – you know how it is. I had even considered letting the Siberian thrush cock go if there was anyone lucky enough to have a hen to make up a pair.

Siberian action

Two things happened to change all that. First, I saw a reference seeking a mutual exchange of thrush species on a European sales site and Siberian thrushes were among the species mentioned. The contact number, however, was a UK number and so I made a note of this simply to get in touch and see what the situation was.