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Earl
Ham
In 1965 Earl inherited his first canaries from his Father-In-Law. He found
these little birds so fascinating that he found local breeders of canaries to
help him learn more about his new hobby. As his interest grew he found out about and joined the local bird club, the Vancouver Island Cage Bird
Society. Thanks to the guidance of the local breeders it didn't take Earl
long to win his first Best in Show award with a red factor canary.
Earl loved his canaries but, he was also fascinated with the
colourful finches and softbills that were out there. As he started to
expand into the finches and softbills he became even more involved in the local
club. One problem he did have was trying to find information on the care
and breeding of these these birds. At that time Earl was in the Canadian
Navy and this provided him with plenty of opportunity to visit many different
Zoos and bird related sites wherever the ship docked. His favourite stop
was San Diego where he met and learned so much from the wonderful people at the
San Diego Zoo.
Through his research into diets he came across a diet
for softbill birds that was originally developed by the San Diego Zoo. This diet turned out to be very good for his birds as he
was successful in breeding many different type of tanagers and African
starlings. Many of his softbills not only won just about every show that
he entered them in but they lived very long lives. A couple of examples of the
longevity of the softbills on this diet were a white-eye (Zostrops) that lived
to 13 years old and a pair of white-cheeked touracos that he had for 20
years. This pair was given to him as adults and he gave them to a friend
20 years later.
During the last 40 plus years of bird keeping Earl has won
many bird shows, earned a few Canadian first breedings, been a President of the
Vancouver Island Cage Bird Society and was one of the founding members and
President of the Avicultural Advancement Council of Canada.
For many years Earls aviary (The Abbey Aviary) was also the
wild bird sanctuary for all of the injured and baby wild birds. Because of
Earls involvement with softbills he was the only one in Victoria that could care
for the local "songbirds". We looked after just about anything
that came our way, this included hand-feeding hummingbirds when their nest came
down to cedar waxwings that ran into windows and even the odd pileated
woodpeckers with broken wings that were hit by cars. One of these pileated
woodpeckers sticks out in my memory because he was such a mean sucker. We
put him into one of my parrot cages to recover after we took him to a
Veterinarian to have his wing repaired (which required many pins in the wing). While he was in my cage he
promptly decided to chisel off the bars of the cage, destroying my cage.
In 1976 Earl decided to turn his hobby into a small part-time
business. The aviary became The Abby Aviary the aviary/business which he
ran out of the basement of his house. In 1986 Earl and Rob decided to open
the business as a full retail store and in March 1987 they open FFlocks Bird
Supply to the public.
Now days Earl is semi-retired, he isn't breeding birds
anymore, but he still has his pets: an African Grey, Angel, a superb spreo
starling, Pooh (one of the babies that he hand-raised), and a white crow,
Snowball (a rescued bird that they raised).
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