different coloured plastic split rings on their legs in March and for a day I kept them in a Sonia cage so that I could study who had paired up to whom. This worked well and I wrote down the newly forming pairs, at this stage I had not decided whether to cage breed them or place them in an aviary. It took me some time before I decided on the way I would breed with them; it was in a large aviary measuring 9’ x 18’ ample room for four pairs. It was not until May, yes I know that is a little late in the year but as their breeding aviary had access to natural daylight (not light through glass) I wanted to wait until the outside temperature warmed up. To be honest when I caught them up to transfer them to the breeding aviary they were very much on the heavy side especially the hens which was a bit of a disappointment as I was hoping that the winter feeding regime had kept them fairly lean. As I am always willing, in fact quite enthusiastic, to try slightly different approaches to breeding I decided to offer both typical Budgerigar nest boxes with a wooden concave and upright parakeet nest boxes with a wire ladder down to the base which was covered with wood chippings. It was quite interesting because three of the pairs selected the parakeet option and only one hen went for the typical Budgerigar nest box. With a relatively large aviary there was plenty


10 BIRD SCENE


of wall space to hang the nest boxes on the wire, what is important is to ensure that the tops of the boxes are at the same height, the higher the box the more popular it will be and fighting can occur to secure the highest.


Picture of breeding stock in their aviary The white nest box is typically used for


Budgerigars the brown box to the left is normally used for parakeets this particular style has a square hole much larger than the typical box. The hen that used the white box struggled to get out of it at times as the hole was only just large enough for her. Fortunately there were no problems with


fighting which can become quite bad certainly between hens with blood often seen and some quite severe damage to both participants. It might have been that because the birds were young, had been together over the winter and had formed their pairs that this helped to


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