Budgie Meeting: June 06 at Stephen Witmer's Aviary

On June 25th, 2006, 7.1 members of The Maryland Budgerigar Society (MBS) met at Stephen Witmer's home and aviary .  They were Kitty Newman, Sally O'Dwyer, Stu Sacks, Stephen Witmer, Carole McHenry, Pauline Domenge and her husband Lou, and their tiny dog affectionately called "baby girl".  Here we had the second meeting of the year for our MBS group.  Since we have started up again after about 5 yrs of being dormant we  have decided to have quarterly meetings instead of monthly meetings and to have them at different members' aviaries.  We always like to see new aviaries and the different ways people "do birds".  I must say we had a very nice attendance considering how spread out we all are.  Some of us live 6 hours away from each other.  

 Stephen lives in a cozy little cottage in the Historical little town of Orange, Va.  Beautiful Hollyhocks and a trailing green grape vine adorn his back porch which faces his outdoor aviary.  Stephen has converted an old one car garage into a very nice light and airy birdroom.  Instead of a garage door he has 3 large floor to ceiling glass panels across the front.  The middle one is a door with a sliding screen in it.  The front quarter of the birdroom contains his breeding cages and the back three quarters is all free flight space for his 100 or so birds.  The floor is lined with clean pine shavings and open feeders are placed on the floor.  Two side windows open for cross ventilation in summer along with the front screen door.  The birds are all very happy and active. 

After we all saw the birds and Stephen's set up we returned to the house for  refreshments and had our meeting.  We hope to put on a show next year so we discussed the possibilities.  Kitty brought a list of Tips for Entering Birds at Shows.  Everyone liked this as there does not seem to be a recommended way to do this.  It showed how to do it in the quickest most efficient way that would be both beneficial to the entrants as well as the show stewards and provide the least amount of stress to the birds themselves.  Stu brought along some samples of show tags and entry forms to explain to the new members and to show them what they looked like.   We hope to have our next meeting some time in Sept.  I know we will all be looking forward to it.