Newsletter of the Canberra Finch Club, april 2005

Gary and Joerg infront of Gary´s aviaries

Overseas Visitor

On Saturday 2 April I met Joerg Landenberger from Heddesheim in Germany who was visitingCanberra for a few days and I was asked to show him some of the local Canberra aviaries while he was here.

Joerg is in Australia for 10 weeks; he started in Adelaide, went to Melbourne,and then spent a few days in the Albury/Howlongarea before coming to Canberra.

He has been visiting aviaries all this time and spent some time working around some of the larger complexes.

He is on his way to Brisbane for the Finch Conference and from there will be heading to the Kimberleys with Mike Fidler to see the Gouldian and other Australian finches in the wild.

I am sure he will also be visiting a lot more aviaries before he is finished.

In Germany,Joerg breeds a large number of finches including,Red Brows, Plum Heads,

Double Bars, Masked Grass Finches, Painteds and Pictorellas.

Due to the cold conditions in Germany, all the Australian species are bred in small cabinets,

Some measuring 80cm x 50cm x 50cm.

He also breeds quite a few of the Parrot Finch family including Tri Coloured, Red Headed;

Peales,and Red Eared Parrot Finches.

He also breeds some of the foreign finches we are used to such as Ruddies, Melbas, Cordons and Blue Caps and some of the more exotic such as Lavender Waxbill Dybowski´s Twinspot

Brown Twinspot and Black Rumped Waxbill plusMetallic Starlings and many other species that I was not familiar with.

I had a very enjoyable day showing him some of the local aviaries here in Canberra.

We spent most of the day discussing the differences in breeding conditions between Canberra and Germany.

I also took him on a couple of our highlights of Canberra crash tour including wild

Kangaroos behind the Campbell Offices. He thoroughly enjoyed his day here and I would like to thank local members for making their aviaries available to him.

He has an interesting website www.Prachtfinkenzucht.de .

Most of the site is in German, but it has lots of photos of both his aviaries and the birds that he breeds. I look forward to catching up with him again at the conference in Brisbane.

Gary Hargraves

Librarian of the Canberra Finch Club