After a period of dormancy

Welcome to the Maryland Budgerigar Society

You are visitor number:

Hit Counter

After a period of dormancy, the Maryland Budgerigar Society (MBS) has come alive once again. Nine fearless members met in March for a grand tour of Virginia Aviaries. Members of MBS reside in Maryland and Virginia.

A group of us left early on a beautiful, brisk Sunday morning from Northern Virginia, armed with Stu Sack’s latest toy--a handy portable GPS system. Thanks to Stu, we never got lost. We traveled to the Richmond area, for our first stop, the Sweatman’s. Sonny and Deen Sweatman are relative newcomers to the hobby. I say relative, because they kept budgies when they lived in South Africa. Sonny and Deen have built a beautiful outdoor aviary and have an ingenious set-up in a corner of their garage where they currently keep their budgies. They attended their first show last year at the Sandhills Show in Fayetteville, North Carolina. They had a great time and even brought home a ribbon. At this year’s Sandhills show, now as seasoned novices, I believe they came home with more ribbons!

After our visit at the Sweatman Aviary, we all drove down to Pauline Domenge’s Aviary near Norfolk, VA. Pauline has a beautiful backyard indoor/outdoor aviary called “the Budgie Pad” where she keeps at least 100 budgies of all colors. I think she is rather fond of the violets and the pieds. The Budgie Pad is built like the aviaries in England. The Aviary flights are encircled with brick.

After visiting Pauline’s, we set off to visit our most southern member, Mark Hirtz. Mark is into budgies in a serious way, his license plate reads “MKEETS”. Mark recently joined ABS and is also into pigeons. He released his rollers for us to see flying, but unfortunately, they preferred to hang out in a nearby tree. We were impressed anyway, as none of us can fly our budgies around the neighborhood. I’m not sure how many miles we put on my old min van, but it was great to see some of our members’ set-ups. We all learned a lot from the tours. The MBS has started meeting quarterly and hopes to hold a show next year. We all hope you will come. We will keep you updated on our progress.