Canary Rolls – by Sheila

As I walked back from our caravan at the coast to Canterbury the other day, to keep up with my training regime for Kili, I found a beautiful little egg sitting in the middle of the path on the grass.  There were no trees anywhere near and it was clear that the egg was going to be trodden on pretty soon, so I picked it up.  It was a creamy colour and probably slightly more than an inch long.  It was stone cold, but I fantasised that maybe if I held it in my hand as I walked, it would warm up and hatch.

It put me in mind of my grandfather, who after retirement, became a “canary fancier”. He gradually built up quite an empire of wooden buildings for his canaries in the spacious grounds of his house.  He took over what had been a summer house, a hen house and a shed, one after the other, ending up with hundreds of birds in cages in them.  As a child, I was fascinated by the little plastic eggs he used to encourage the canaries to breed.  He would carefully fashion a felt lined nest and put it into a cage with a blue egg in it, to give the birds the idea, I suppose.

That’s what I was thinking about, as I walked along with my egg – then it all went horribly wrong!  I came to a litter bin and saw what looked like a couple of skate boards in it.  At first I walked past, but then I thought, wouldn’t Oscar and his brothers enjoy them, when they next visit?  So I walked back and fished them out of the bin.  Unfortunately, the egg in my hand smashed during the manoeuvre, resulting in a yolky mess.  Well – I suppose there was no hope of it hatching out anyway!  The skate boards looked in pretty good nick, however.  They were too heavy for me to carry for several miles, so I hid them in some bushes and I hope that they will still be there next time I pass with the car.  I will resist the temptation to try one out: an accident could end my prospects of climbing Kilimanjaro – and explaining an injury from skate boarding at the age of sixty seven would be very embarrassing at the hospital!

The skateboards I found
The skateboards I found

So as I walked on, I contented myself with thinking about these long ago canaries.  All of them were called Jock – males and females alike.  My grandfather, at that age, had trouble remembering people’s names, let alone birds’ ones.  He had seven daughters and a multitude of grand daughters, and gave up completely on getting their names right.  He ended up calling us all Irène, which was actually the name of his seventh much loved daughter.

As a canary fancier, my grandfather would enter his birds for shows, which involved a lot of special treatment.  The chosen Jocks would be fed up on a special diet involving egg yolks.  That smacks a bit like cannibaism, now I think about it!  He would boil up hens eggs – give the whites to us children, who were very happy to eat them – and feed the yolks, mixed with special weeds we were sent to find in the hedgerows to the lucky birds.

Next came the really exciting bit – the beauty parlour!  He would carefully hold Jock in his hand and wash him/her all over with a special flannel and warm water.  The wet bird would then be placed on to a narrow piece of fabric and be rolled up like a sausage roll to dry.  The rolls of birds would be set on the tiles in front of the gas fire to dry off.  Sometimes more than a dozen birds would get this treatment at once and there would be neat rows of them all lying there together in the dining room fireplace.

When I got home, I looked up on the internet to see whether this had all been a flight of my imagination, and at first I could see nothing at all to suggest that this had ever been a proper way of caring for birds.  In fact quite the contrary: the advice nowadays seem to be to give canaries water for bathing and they will make use of it themselves on a daily basis.  However, at last I did track down the “Encyclopaedia of Caged Birds” 1928 revised edition, and there was a rather grainy picture of “Hand Washing a Canary”!  Exactly as I remember.

Canary rolls
Canary rolls

Once the birds had been completely prepared, they would be driven to the station in special show cages, to go by train to wherever the show was.  My grandfather lived in Hawick on the main line between Edinburgh and London, so they could have been going pretty much anywhere in the country.  The line was a victim to the Beeching cuts in 1971, but I am pleased to know that it is to be at least partially reopened later this year.  Quite how the birds made it at the other end to the show and then back on to a return train afterwards, I have no idea, but I do remember birds arriving back, the successful Jocks proudly bearing red or blue rosettes affixed to their cages.

White necked raven
White necked raven

I rather fancifully googled “Kilimanjaro birds”, when I was thinking of writing this, wondering what sort of egg might be dropped in my path there, and I am slightly horrified by what I found! I found a picture of a bird with the following description: “White necked ravens are big birds with large strong scary looking beaks.  They hang around the campsites and huts on Kilimanjaro scavenging and looking for scraps”.  So not only do we now have to deal with the prospect of leopards and rats – see blog of 10th of March – but now also big scary birds!  Bring back the canaries!