When I was a little'un, I kept....

[Pete Sara]

So the rumors you bred pterodactyl's when you were young was a Myth then tintola...

[Tintola]

Rumors are unfounded, but Archeopteryx were there for the taking if you could get a Western Australian to use for bate! You'll keep.

[desertbirds]

Dad and my older brother kept parrots and budgies before we left Glen Innes when I was seven. Once firmly ensconced in Manly, Sydney I received a baby budgie for my eighth birthday which was promptly swiped from my shoulder and chewed up by our cat in front of me. The neighbour across the road heard my screams and came over with a little chocolate box lined with cotton wool, to lay the remains in, until mum came home from work, at which time we performed a decent Christian burial in the back yard, to which the cat was not invited ( I was a latchkey child which was ok in those days.) A couple of years later, a ten year old, red-headed pagan boy, who needed some guidance, was enrolled in our otherwise, exclusively catholic school and led me astray by teaching me to climb up into factory and bakery roofs to collect pigeon squabs to hand rear. Poor mum took a couple to her work to feed as I was too busy with school. ( I told her that I found them on the street .) Dad, needing very little encouragement, built a pigeon loft and before you could say mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa, another two aviaries with finches and three king parrots took up most of the small back yard. Within a couple of years I was keeping Silver-eyes, Bulbuls and hand-raised Indian Mynahs (which used to eat the occasional diamond dove). Also among the collection of lame ducks was a seagull with one wing and a White-faced heron also with a gammy wing. Cost me a fortune in fish. The rest, as they say, is history and has provided me with a lifetime of endless entertainment and wonder. There has probably only been a period of about one year when I have not had birds of some description enhancing my life.

That explains everything Tint Hatred of cats, rescue centre and love of all things feathered

[TomDeGraaff]

I decided id try and breed species which I had kept in the past but had not bred when i was a kid so in the past few years have bred loads of gouldians, br double bars, stars, longtails, cubans and scarlets. still got quite a few to tick of the list

It may be worth another thread but I also find that I want to revisit those birds of my youth: finchwise: spice, fires, Cubans, Parrotwise: Bourkes, scarlets, bluewings, pileateds and more.