Chester County Bird Club (09/15/2001) - PA
Judge: Paul Crow
Exhibitors: 14
Entries: 106

Judge's Comments:

This show occured on the weekend after the September 11th, World Trade Tower disaster and was well attended by many concerned exhibitors. Unfortunately, Sandy Jarmuth, a resident of New York City was not able to attend, but we learned all was well with her. Even without Sandy's 15 to 20 birds, we had a great turnout with 106 birds.

Every Section was well represented, making for a wide variety of birds to judge and the results were that all Sections were evenly represented on the top bench.

RARES: Perhaps one of the largest local show Rare Sections I've seen with eight birds, including a Madagascar, two Abyssinians and one adult and 4 young Black-cheeked. the Madagascar hen had a nice shape and condition. The young Black-cheeks were 3rd and 4th and one thing I noticed was that they seemed to have a darker coloration than I've seen on most Black-cheeks. the Abyssinian had a badly frayed tail and therefore wasn't in the running to continue.

FISCHER'S: Very good turnout with 12 entries. There was some good size and color in the birds shown, but also quite a difference in color variations from the top to the bottom. A few of the birds showed too much dark in the head. We discussed some of the difference between the Type I & II birds and agreed that more needs to be discussed for the exhibitors to know where to place their birds. The top Fischer's was a large bird in very good condition and had excellent deportment. The 2nd place bird was a young Green with an orange face that just stood out. Third was another young bird, a Dilute Green (50% Suffused), which had even coloration and no signs of the mottling we often observe in Yellows. I also had a Dilute Green (80% suffusion) in the Section.

MASKED: Nine birds entered, including Green, Medium Green, Dilute Green 50%, Blue, Violet, And Dilute Blue 50%. The Dilute Green was a well-proportioned and conditioned bird.

GREEN PEACHFACED: Along with the Australian, the largest section with 16 birds. Over the past few years it has seemed that we've seen less and less entries in this section, so it was nice to see the numbers back up. The entries comprised of Green, Medium Green, OF Green, OF Medium Green, Green Violet, and Lutino. My top 5 birds were very nice with a Medium Green first, Lutino second and Green third. All had good conformation, color, size, and condition.

BLUE PEACHFACED: Nine entries which was somewhat disappointing after having been built up to the largest Section during the last few years. I pretty much had all single birds in classes with a Blue, Medium Blue, WF Blue, WF Medium Blue, WF Dark Blue, YellowFaced and American Dilute 80% suffused. I had some concerns during the couple of days leading up to the show as I heard about the Dilute class being added, but hadn't seen it in print yet. It essentially is hte old American White or Silver and the Greywing broken into 2 classes. Of course, I ended up with an entry and was glad I did a little checking before going to the show. The YellowFaced apparently was a mix of several colors. After discussion with Linna, we determinbed it was probably a YellowFaced Seagreen Ino. The Dilute ended up being a Seagreen Dilute, also owned by Linna. The Whitefaced entries had very clean faces. Unfortunately, the Blue birds did not match up size-wise to the rest of the entries and did not make the top bench.

GREEN PIED: Five entries, consisting of Medium, OF, Heavy Pied, and a Pied Australian Cinnamon. The heavy Pieds birds were the best in the Section, both being sizeable, well marked birds.

BLUE PIED: Six entries including Linna's Division winner, a nicely marked WF that had a snow white forehead, great size, condition and never moved off the perch all day long. Second in Section was a Seagreen Australian Cinnamon. The 3 top birds were all quite good. It was nice to see 2 strong Pied Sections.

American Cinnamon: 5 entries, greens, OF, and Seagreen. The Green and the Seagreen exhibited good size and condition and both made the top bench.

Australian Cinnmon: This was the other Section with 16 birds. There were quite a wide variety of colors entered, including a couple YellowFced, which I had never seen before in the Australian. There was also what the exhibitor told me was a Whitefaced Yellowfaced entered into AOC. Apparently the Whiteface hides the YellowFaced trait. I'm not really sure the bird should be in AOC, but instead entered as it visually exhibits. The top 2 birds in the Section were shown by John Gossweiler and finished 5th and 6th overall.

VIOLET: Only 5 birds were entered here. Seems that the Violet Sections have been declining lately. 3 of the birds were Whitefaced, exhibiting good clean crowns.

LONGFEATHERED: The rising Section with 8 entries. There certainly would have been quite a few more had Sandy Jarmuth been able to attend. I had a variety of colors to pick from. Green, Medium Green, Orangefaced, and Australian Cinnamon. Condition, which seems to be the drawback of many Longfeathered, held back most. I did have one bird entered as a Longfeathered that lacked the larger size seen in these birds. It was an Intermediate, having Longfeathered blood but not exhibiting all of the typical signs. However, it was an excellent bird overall and it did take the last place on the top bench. At this point, we still don't have an official standard to judge the Longfeathered. The judges who attended the National spent considerable time discussing the birds entered there and hopefully we are learning what to look for when judging.

CHAMPIONS: A whopping 7 entries. Two Orangefaced, an OF Medium Green, a Whitefaced, a Dark Green, a Dilute Green Fischer's, and an Abyssinian. A few were out of condition and one had an egg. Five made the top bnech. The Orangefaced shown by Linna Reusmann ended up as the Best Bird in Show.

So, for a weekend where America stopped, we had a very respectable gathering of Lovebird Exhibitors and quite a number of great birds. This was my first time to meet Linna after she moved east and my first time to see her birds. They certainly impressed me.