As a youth in 1960s Lancashire, I bred and exhibited Border canaries with my father until I left for university. Career and travel kept me out of the Fancy for many years but on my return to canary-keeping in 1996 I was sad to see the decline. Today's Borders bear little relation to the published Standard and, in the view of many, many experts, are over-sized, heavy and clumsy. The "wee gem's" classic qualities of lightness, balance, jauntiness and grace, those intangible things which confer 'beauty', have been sacrificed on the altar of sheer size. In my disappointment, I took-up Fifes, because they still preserve something of the classic Border, and indeed, Fife Fancies are the 'original' Border Canary. We owe a great debt to Walter Lumsden and the other pioneers of the Fife Fancy, who took 'the road less travelled', in refusing to pursue 'size at all costs'.

The trend towards 'gigantism' is even more evident in budgerigars; today's 'champions' portrayed in Cage Birds seem to me ugly and grotesque. The glowing colours and drum-tight plumage of the birds I knew as a boy have been replaced by creatures with massively distorted heads and eyes buried in feathering that could best be described as 'rag-doll'. Take a look at R.A. Vowles' exquisite depictions of the champions of the 1940s, in Watmough's 'Cult of the Budgerigar'. then consider a class of modern show birds; the contrast is painful.

I hope that within a few years, the budgerigar fancy will either return to the original wild budgerigar, for its original qualities, or to the few breeders who still maintain studs of 'classic' budgerigars. Urgent, radical, reform is needed if we are to save either the Budgerigar and the Border as show breeds; if there is no return to 'classical values' then fertility, colour and type will continue to decline, hastening the end. These types of bird will disappear, as others have done before, and new ones will supersede them.

Have we actually forgotten why we keep birds in the first place? Have we lost the ability to  appreciate the balance of colour, form and beauty in a bird? Consider any robin, blackbird or Greenfinch in the garden and you will find silky plumage, rich colours, and a type which Nature has honed to perfection over millions of years. Then consider a class of  champion Borders, Norwich or Budgerigars. Forty years ago there were Borders which were almost as good as a wild bird in feather and form and budgerigars still resembled their wild cousins in fertility, vigour and depth of colour. Today there is no comparison.

The decay in standards is not just my personal view; eminent writers and breeders have said the same for decades. W.E. Brooks wrote about the 'size madness' among Border fanciers as long ago as 1948; he linked the same trend to the decline of the Norwich. He also blamed the extinction of the Crested Canary in the 1890s, on the few wealthy fanciers who were able to dominate the entire show scene through sheer buying power; the parallels with the modern Border scene are obvious.

So how do we maintain official 'standards' and more importantly how we get judges to adhere to those standards? Currently, many canary standards are not worth the paper they are printed on. The official Norwich Standard displays a bird with a beautiful rounded head, no 'eyebrows', smooth, tapering plumage and a jaunty carriage, standing high on the perch. The birds I saw squatting on their perches at Telford bore little resemblance to this, and their bushy eyebrows would have made Denis Healey jealous.

Border judges appear to pay little attention to the Official Standard and continue to reward birds that are truly massive, approaching seven inches in length. Even the official Fife Standard, with its humped back and alderman's waistcoat, seems to ape the trend toward 'rambo' birds.

So who is responsible? Are the official bodies incapable of holding judges to the Standard?
Should judges be 'group tested' before large events and demoted from the panel if they cannot judge to the standard? Has any judge ever been forcibly retired because of incompetence?
Or are the power and influence of the money-men so great within the Fancy that they have simply made official standards irrelevant?

It seems to me that the entire canary fancy needs a lengthy and in-depth debate on these issues, or it will fail to attract novice exhibitors; more importantly it is likely to lose those champions who cannot afford to buy their way into the top prizes.

I have a radical suggestion for those fanciers who are sick and tired of watching size and money triumph over the official standard. I propose we simply return to the 'classic canary'. Let the big money men go their own way - arguably to smaller and smaller classes of massive birds costing £1000 apiece. Let the true lovers of the Border, the Fife and the Norwich create classes for 'Classic Borders', 'Classic Norwich' etc. After all, this is how the Fife originated; as the 'miniature Border'.

In order to foster debate on this I have created a picture gallery called 'Canary Classics', on the World Wide Web, which anyone can access for the cost of a local phone call. I know that many fanciers are retired, and may know little of computers, but most will have younger relatives, for whom access to the Internet is literally 'child's play'. I hope that Cage Birds could also play a central role in supporting this debate through its own columns- and we truly need a discussion  of 'millennial' significance.

© 2000 Graham White
This article was first published in Cage & Aviary Birds magazine

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