Chester County Bird Club (10/9/2004) - Exton, PA
Judge: Phil Ryan
Exhibitors: 10
Entries: 90

Judge's Comments:

Exton is about 45 minutes from the Philadelphia airport. The gymnasium at a private school was the venue for this well attended show. There was a large sale area set up in half the gym and the other half was the show judging area. There was a curtain dividing the gym. In addition to ALBS there was also a parrot show and a Cockatiel show going on simultaneously.

There were 90 entries from 10 exhibitors. We went to 14 places on the top bench. We had at least 1 bird in every Section. There were 2 rares (both Black-cheeked), 1 Masked, several Fischer's, about 67 Peachfaced and 4 Champions.

We started judging at 10:30, took a 45 minute break for lunch and finished about 3:00PM. The club had provided very good lighting for the show bench. Most of the birds were in very good to excellent condition. A few had obvious pin feathers in the face and neck areas but they were certainly the minority.

The first bird I judged ended up being the top Love Bird. The best Black-cheeked bird I have seen was the number 1 bird. It was a large bird for this species, and I felt it was perfectly marked. Some of the things that I look for are the small, black bib and for the orange spot to come off of the bib at a 90 degree angle on each side, then for the spot to be well defined and circular. This bird had it all. Unusual for this species was the excellent cage behavior and lack of skittishness. Second was an Orange Faced Medium Green Peachfaced which had excellent cage behavior, a great stance and outstanding color and conformation. It would have been 1st in many shows. Third was a Yellowfaced Australian Cinnamon, 4th ws a Whitefaced Blue, 5th was an Orangefaced Green Pied, 6th was a Seagreen Violet Pied, and 7th was a Green Fischer's. See the official show results for the rest of the placements.

4 of the top 14 were not Peachfaced, 6 of the 10 exhibitors were represented on the top bench. A novice exhibitor's bird was in 8th place as the top novice. The best unflighted was a very nicely marked Seagreen pied which should do well next year. The symmetry on that bird was great but it had not fully matured for color and size. 4 Champion birds were entered. In general, the condition of the champion birds was not quite up to the condition of the general entrants. Champions were placed at 10th, 12th, and 13th.

My thanks to the Chester County Bird Club for inviting me to participate in their tradition of hosting Love Bird shows. Special thanks to Linna Reusmann for maintaining the show records for the ALBS division, to Frank Horan for a fine job of stewarding, and to Paul Crow and Katy Secor for making sure I got where I was supposed to go. I was sorry to miss Janet Landvater who had an unavoidable conflict.