According to the great Victorian authority on canaries, W.A.
Blakston, - the Scotch Fancy was developed from imported Belgian
canary stock during the early 1800s. By the 1830s a distinctly new variety
had evolve by selection in Glasgow and central lowland Scotland where it
was known as 'The Glasgow Don' and more descriptively as
'The
Bird o' Circle'. Like its Belgian ancestors, this is one of the
'birds
of position' in contrast to the purely 'type'
canaries, such
as the Border or the Yorkshire. The ideal was that from the tip of the
beak to the tip of the tail the form should be like the rim of a circle.
The more the bird conformed to a perect circle, the greater were the points
awarded.
By the 1870s it was hugely popular among the mining communities of central
Scotland; individual classes of up to 60 birds were common at shows and
often several hundred Scotch Fancy's were exhibited in a single event.
G.T.Dodwell
writes in The Lizard Canary and Other Rare Breeds that
in the 1890s fanciers returned to the Belgian Canary for new blood and
that the two breeds became virtually indistinguishable. He comments
that this blurring of the two breeds, which were closely related to begin
with, led to the decline of both in Britain around the time of Great War
(1914-18).
The decline continued until in 1970 the Old
Variety Canaries Association began the long task of resurrecting
the breed from the scattered stocks which survived. This work has met with
considerable success and now the variety is being shown in reasonable numbers
again at specialist shows. As Chairman of the O.V.C.A. during this
time G.T. Dodwell undoubtedly played a significant role in
saving the Scotch Fancy from extinction.
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Clear Yellow and Buff Scotch Fancies
by Ludlow - 1890s
UK
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