Cage and Aviary Birds #6432 19th August 2026

How have your birds coped with the hot summer? It’s so unpredictable - this week we here about the star heat-adapter in a mixed finch collection, and it was a mother brambling! She waltzed through the wave without breaking sweat, which was just as well since her mate contributed squat. He’s now known as Chocolate, as in chocolate teapot. In the canary world, two top champions share their advice for the in-between month of August. Jay Bunker, whose far-northern home in Canada undergoes weather extremes we can only, er, admire, explains how he bought, installed, tried and then tweaked a new lighting system in his birdroom. Retrospectives come from budgie man Alan Fretten and from Dave Brown, who reports on how Foreign Bird Leaguers adapted, not to heat, but World War Two! Finally, Dutch budgie ace Peter van Amelsvoort sheds light on a dark secret of that fancy… cannibalism!