Les Rance, Editor, The Parrot Society UK |
www.theparrotsocietyuk.org
|
les.rance@
s I write this introduction near the end of May 2020 I am mindful of the effects of our recent weather for breeders attempting to breed in aviaries. I can remember in February 2019, the weather was very kind to us with temperatures some days of 14C; which continued for so long that it brought some of my hens into breeding condition and egg production started. Sadly the majority of eggs were not fertile and temperatures in both March and April fell back. This year the spring weather has been much more, well, ‘spring like’ and so far the breeding season is going quite well. However, this year has seen the Coronavirus lockdown which has changed the lives for many of us with many people being furloughed from work. Difficulties shopping, through fear many people not wanting to go to hospital for fairly important treatment and few venturing to Accident & Emergency departments. Deaths associated to the virus are already over 36,000 and people have been confined to their homes for long periods. Fortunately, it appears that things are starting to improve and in the next two weeks it is hoped that non-essential shops will be able to open. At least bird keepers and breeders have a good hobby to give us something else to think about and carry on doing from our homes, we are ‘lucky’ that we can continue to enjoy our hobby, there are many others that are not so
04 BIRD SCENE
INTRODUCT A
fortunate, certainly anyone who has a hobby involving sport has been very badly hit. Let us just hope that this nasty virus can be beaten and that we do not have another round of it in 2021. Believe it or not, it is now over three years since the up-listing of African Grey parrots that had been added to Annex ‘A’ of CITES on 4th February 2017 and we are still advising people on what is required from DEFRA to ensure that all Greys that are sold have the correct Article 10 papers. If you are thinking of buying an African Grey you must ensure it comes with the yellow CITES documentation, it is an offence to buy a Grey if it is not correctly licenced. Dare I mention Brexit? At this time two years ago I wrote ‘What is starting to interest us is the affects that Brexit will have on bird keepers and the possibility that quarantine will be re-imposed on birds coming from mainland Europe. This would make quite a difference for companies who import birds for the pet industry as at the present time, as far as I am aware, there are no functioning quarantine stations for birds in the UK. These facilities can be quite expensive to both build and maintain and therefore anyone thinking of building one will obviously think very carefully before they go down that route. This may well mean a dire shortage of stock for the pet trade.’ Really, at the time of writing this Introduction nothing is any clearer!
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