Finding your flock: First steps to starting an aviary

Ask any experienced aviary bird keeper how they learned their craft and the answer is rarely a book or a website. More often than not, it's a person, usually decades into the hobby, usually found at a local bird club meeting – and usually the type who'd never call themselves an expert right up until the moment they start talking. Someone like Murray Davey, an accomplished bird breeder based in Wellington.

Murray Davey has been breeding and showing birds across the country since the 1960s, when he started out as a junior showman. These days he keeps Norwich canaries – large, round, notoriously difficult birds that he describes with the quiet pride of someone who has earned the right to find them challenging.

He has the kind of wisdom every beginner hopes to stumble across. He and his wife Jan Davey took a Federation Medal in the Colour Fed Canary category at last year's national show, testament to their knowledge in the aviary world. Although Murray is humble about his multitude of show successes, he’s also generous with his knowledge, matter of fact about what works, and well aware that good advice is getting harder to find.

"A lot of experienced fanciers have age-old potions and remedies they swear by. I’m still picking stuff up from them, despite being in the game for over five decades" he says.

So where does a beginning fancier actually start?

(For the newcomers: a “fancier” is the term used to describe someone with a keen interest in birds)

The solution is more straightforward than you’d think: just find your local bird club. It's where the information lives, where experienced keepers are willing to share it, and where the community develops.

The aviary bird community in New Zealand is small and incredibly close-knit, with most of the knowledge communicated through local clubs and Facebook groups rather than one centralised resource. Which makes finding your nearest club all the more important. A good starting point is The New Zealand Federation of Bird Clubs, where you can find contact details for your local (or nearest) bird club.

Another advantage of joining your local club is a practical one. Topflite supplies birdseed through many bird clubs, and members are able to advise on what feed is best for each breed, a welcome bonus when you're getting a setup off the ground.

The things nobody tells you at the start

Once you're connected, the real aviary apprenticeship begins. People like Murray who have been keeping birds for years, can give you the good oil on what often catches new keepers out. For example, managing draughts in your aviary. A draught in an enclosure can be one of the biggest health risks for aviary birds, something that's easy to overlook in New Zealand's variable climate.

Keeping your aviaries facing north, and installing blinds to add additional protection for when New Zealand’s weather isn't playing ball is prudent when creating an enclosure that supports the health and comfort of your birds.

"If your birds get drafted and chilled – their body temperature is twice ours – they find it hard to recover," Murray says. "Warmth is probably the best thing you can give them.”

Cleanliness is the other non-negotiable. Experienced keepers do these things automatically, weekly cleaning, dry living quarters, no mould, while beginners sometimes underestimate the basics until something goes wrong.

And with bird health and avian medicine being incredibly specialised and often difficult to find in New Zealand, having an experienced mentor on hand to assist with tips, tricks and crucial knowledge to keep your birds happy and healthy, is essential.

Showing off

For many avian enthusiasts, the show hall is where the hobby really comes alive. Annual regional and national shows bring the bird community together in a way that's hard to replicate elsewhere, part competition, part reunion, part masterclass. Murray has done well on the show circuit over the years, though he's characteristically modest about it. “My forte is breeding them. I get more pleasure out of breeding than I do showing.”

It's a sentiment you'll hear often from experienced keepers, but showing is also one of the best places to learn for newcomers to the aviary bird world. Intel from experienced fanciers who have shown birds for decades is helpful for understanding the requirements for specific species.

In a world where most questions get answered by a Google search, aviary bird keeping is a quiet reminder that some knowledge doesn't live online. It lives in the people who've been doing this for decades and in New Zealand, those people are usually found at a club.

Murray has been at this for over sixty years and he's still learning. That, more than anything, tells you what kind of hobby this is, and the kind of community surrounds it. Not a bad reason to join your local bird club if you ask us.