A pair of royal
blue budgerigars were
given to King George
V in the l930s .The birds had
been bred by
Harold
E.Peir and delivered
to the palace by Dr Garnet Halloran
of NSW . It seems the king
was patron of the
Budgerigar Club . The name
Budgerigar is attributed to
the Aborigines cooking
young birds in fires and
calling them “Bedgerigah”.
These colourful Australian birds were introduced to Europe in 1870 by ornithologist John Gould
who with his wife produced
the illustrated book ,
Birds of Australia , and
started the NSW
Gould League of
Bird Lovers , a 1948
badge of that group in the Little Darwin collection displays the
White Fronted Chat. During the
1930s
NSW aviculturalists received
a collection of Northern Territory finches from which to breed . Smuggling
Territory birds overseas from Darwin
aboard ships occurred in the
l930s . A new
book of interest is -Australian Bird
Names- by Ian Fraser
and Jeannie Gray , another fine CSIRO Publishing effort.
