| HISTORY |
| Budgerigars were discovered in Australia in the year 1770 and reportedly they were seen in flocks so large that they blotted the sun out view! According to Robert Manvell, the Australian National Museum curators in Sydney hold that the budgerigar, the rosella and the night parrot share a common ancestry apparently confirmed by DNA testing. The budgerigar might have been much larger than the wild one is today. Its need to fly extremely long distances for food and water during most of the year may have necessitated its evolution into the smallish and sturdy bird it is today. It seems it had already evolved into its current state at least four million years ago. Fairly recent discoveries have uncovered quantities of fossilised remains of budgerigar bones in a cave inhabited by a prehistoric large carnivore bat. (Read Manvell article) Budgerigars were brought into Europe in 1840 by John Gould (2) who imported the first pairs of wild caught budgerigars into England. Their popularity has since grown tremendously both as pets and as exhibition birds. All our stock comes from the same wild budgerigar species native only to mainland Australia. Numerous mutations have since appeared sometimes in different countries at the same time. This is a phenomenon not yet explained. The late Cyril H Rogers, breeder and authority on budgerigars has lived through the most exiting time when most of these mutations occured. His articles are extremely good reading for the keen budgerigar enthusiast. A chronology of the appearance of Budgerigar mutations is given on various sites (4). Some mutations have been lost either through lack of breeding knowledge or through lack of interest in the new form. In every probability, new mutations will continue to appear. |
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